Reading Group Guide: Being Mrs. Alcott :

1. A recurring question in Being Mrs. Alcott is whether life unfolds as a result of accidents or choices. How do you think Grace ultimately interprets her own life?

2. There are three marriages featured in the novel: Grace and Bain, Prissy and Kody, and Erin and Marley. Are there any similarities? What does each reveal about the nature of commitment?

3. Few parents would ever admit that they are disappointed in their children. Do you find Grace's criticisms of her sons realistic? If there is blame to place, do you think Grace, Bain, Hank or Erin is at fault for the family's inability to communicate?

4. Inheritance in various forms is a complex part of the narrative. Grace ponders genetics and the age-old debate between nature and nurture, wondering what, if anything, her sons have inherited from her. Inherited wealth – or the lack thereof - shapes the relationship between Hank and his parents. What do you think the story reveals about what can and cannot be passed between generations? How do Grace, Bain, Ferris, Erin , and Hank reflect attitudes toward inherited traits or inherited wealth?

5. Eleanor Montgomery stoicism is a point of contention between Ferris and Grace, and yet both siblings keep their personal pain secret in much the same way. Is this Eleanor's legacy? Is it the same one that Grace passes on to her own children?

6. Prissy's background differs substantially from the other major characters, and yet part of her appeal is that she's different. What is her role in the novel? What does she reveal about Grace? Do you find her ultimately sympathetic?

7. How is “clamming” used as a metaphor?

8. The Cape Cod landscape is more than just the setting for this novel. How does it contribute to the feel/tone of the book? How does it illuminate the characters?

9. What is the author saying about the nostalgia of a “family home”? Is it the product of the imagination? Can memories be separate from the place in which they occurred? How do Grace, Bain, and Erin treat their memories – as sores or as solace?

10. Erin , even as an adult and father of his own children, is still heavily dependent upon his parents for financial and emotional support. Is there a time when children ever outgrow the need for a parent? Is Bain's anger justified or cruel?

11. Grace has deferred to Bain on many critical decisions throughout their life together, and yet she comes to recognize Bain's tremendous dependence upon her. How do you interpret the last line?

On Being Mrs. Alcott

I've read Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken , more than a dozen times as part of every American poetry class I'd attended in elementary school, high school, and college. It was one of my favorites, the familiar stanzas embracing a lack of convention and a celebration of risk.

I thought it could have been written for my mother.

She is an artist, who created a magical world for my sister and me. Our life was full of adventures, projects, conversation, and stories, but decidedly lacking in basic necessities like heat and toilet paper. At one point, we had thirteen cats and nearly as many hamsters. For breakfast, we wore parkas over our nightgowns and ate cereal with the oven door open. I'd skip school when I wanted, and my mother and I would go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, or the Whitney, or we'd rent a rowboat in Central Park and have a picnic. I'd skateboard down the hill outside our brownstone on 95 th Street and fly out into Lexington Avenue while my mother stopped traffic. I missed a solid week of fourth grade to attend a festival of Katherine Hepburn films.

I remember opening the front door one afternoon to find an elderly man rolled up in white paper lying in the living room. My mother was photographing him. I stood and watched as she adjusted the lights, looked through her lens, rearranged a fold in the paper, and looked again. Finally, she noticed me. “I'm just experimenting a bit with death, here. But I bought a lemon cake. We'll all have tea together in a few minutes.” The old man looked up from the floor and smiled.

“Be original!” My mother always called to me as I climbed aboard the school bus. “Be special!” In our world to be ordinary, normal, and average were the true sins. Mundane was a fate worse than death. A road other than the one less traveled was out of the question.

I read Frost's words again about the time that I'd finished my third novel, Regrets Only . I was thinking of an idea for a new book, and sought inspiration as I have before in poetry. This time, though, the poem struck me in a way it hadn't before. The two roads diverged. His narrator took one. What would have happened if he'd taken the other? What if the road less traveled represented an alternate course? How much is a life shaped by the choices we each make when we come to that divergence in the path?

These questions haunted me over the next several weeks. I thought of my own life. I'd quit the practice of law to try to write. My decision was far from impulsive, and yet I left behind four years of law school, six years of experience, and a partnership track. What would have happened to me if I'd continued to pursue a legal career? After I quit law, I'd enrolled in a memoir-writing course, where I met the woman who introduced me to my literary agent. What if the fiction class I'd intended to take hadn't been full? Would I have another agent or none at all? Would I ever have been published? Just after my first novel had been sold, my son was born and my husband and I separated. I had no particular place to go, and no particular place I had to be. I drove south with my baby, my two dogs, and my computer. On a passing recommendation, I visited South Salem , and fell in love with a farmhouse built in 1790. It has a thin river running behind the property and a moss-covered statue of St. Francis in the garden. I bought the place even though I didn't know a soul, hadn't known the town existed, and couldn't find the grocery store. But I made a choice that has shaped our life for the past four years. What would have happened if we'd gone somewhere else? Where might we be?

Being Mrs. Alcott was written around this question of accident – or fate – versus choice – or free will. The novel spans the life of Grace Alcott, a woman for whom much has been beyond her control or not her choice. As she faces her mortality, she must come to terms with what she has done, what she has allowed to happen, what she has left to do, and what she wants to change. Like Frost's narrator, she reflects upon the journey she's taken and looks forward, having learned from the road she's traveled.