Jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon

1. Why might Cornelia Nixon begin, rather than end, her novel with the shooting? What difference does it make in how you read the novel?

- We paid more attention to the novel and what went wrong in the love affair.

- He never talked about the beating and assumed she knew about the beating.

2. Does the author fully develop her characters? How would you describe both Martha Jane Cairnes and Nicholas McComas? Are the two well-suited to one another? What kind of character is Martha's brother Richard? Of the primary characters, which do you most admire? Least admire?

- We thought they were a nice couple.  He seemed to love her but when the brothers beat him, he knew he couldn’t be part of the family.

3. Was the romance between Martha and Nick doomed? Given the hostile environment and personalities and prejudices of those involved, was the tragedy inevitable? Could the shooting have been avoided?

- At first we didn’t think so because it was under the radar and she would have moved to one of his farms.

- Her brother made it doomed.

4. The novel indicates that the Civil War, while officially over, had yet to end in places like Jarrettsville. Were you surprised by the level of animosity in the wake of the war?

- No, taking rights away from blacks after Lincoln’s assassination was not a good scene.

5. How are African Americans treated in Jarrettsville? Are the freed slaves better off after the war than they were as slaves before the war?

- They had “freedom” but were intimidated and treated badly.

- You could ask that same question now, like Michelle Alexander wrote The New Jim Crow.

6. Did you detect the double-standard between men and women, especially with regards to Martha and Isie?

- Of course.

7. At what point did you come to understand why Martha shot Nick? Do you sympathizes with her? If so, how does an author go about building sympathy for a murderer? If you have no sympathy for Martha, why is that?

- Once she had the baby, it was so shameful with so much social stigma

8. How thoroughly does Cornelia Nixon establish the novel's 19th-century setting? Does she bring to life both the era and its people? If so, how does she accomplish this? If not, why not?

- Made us think about researching ancestry and we compared what we knew about our background and who might make a good story.

9. Does the ending hold up? Were you surprised... or let down by the way the novel ended?

10. Did you learn something new by reading this historical novel, perhaps something about the aftermath of the Civil War, the treatment of freed slaves, or the hostilities that continued after the war.

- Even though people are still related, the animosity of fighting on other sides of the war did not go away.