1.) Sissy calls Susie and Rodney’s wedding, “The wedding that never should have happened?” Does she still feel this way at the end of the book? What was most surprising about the wedding itself?
2.) Is it realistic to believe that this level of discrimination existed in the 1980s? What about today? How has discrimination changed over the past thirty years?
3.) Who do you believe should pay for the crime? Thevenot? Rousseaau? Burton? Borders? James? Others?
4.) How did Sissy’s relationship with her father differ from that of Susie’s and Marianne’s? How did those differences blind Sissy to the truth?
5.) Did Dr. Switzer’s role in helping Sissy make up for his complicities in Bob Burton’s abuse of Susie? How important was Switzer’s role in this story?
6.) What did you think of Sissy’s reaction to Warren and Joey when she realized they were the ones who attacked her?
7.) "That's the power of love," Dr. Warner testified about Rodney and Susie’s recovery. Why do you think they survived?
8.) Rodney said, “un-forgiveness eats at the person who harbors it… not the one it’s aimed at.” What do you think of this statement?
9.) At the end of the book Sissy says “I didn’t have to go into a trance to feel sunshine on my face and hear the waves of the Gulf of Mexico rolling towards the hot sand. I was in my happy place.” How could she be happy after all that she had learned? And all that had happened to her?