Love in Complete Sentences A Novel [Paperback]

Life is a challenge for 36-year-old Kate Cavanaugh, high school guidance counselor to a motley group of at-risk students. Two years after finding her young husband dead in bed beside her, Kate's storybook life has vanished, and she and her two children are still reeling. Her daughter Charlotte, once a sweet girl, has morphed into an angry, tattooed, tongue-studded teen; and Hunter, Kate's four-year-old, keeps his feelings sealed tight inside and an empty ketchup bottle clasped to his heart. When a tragedy occurs at the Alan B. Shepard High School, it's Kate who finds herself in need of counsel and guidance. What she does next catapults her and her family down an unfamiliar road, on a trajectory into space???toward understanding, forgiveness and healing.

1. Discuss the ways in which Kate Cavanaugh and her family grapple with grief, even two years after Kyle's death. Should Kate and the children be further along in the grieving process by now? What holds them up? Is the grieving process longer and more gradual than perhaps our society permits? In what ways can you relate to Kate's struggles? What is universal about grief, and what about it is more specific to our culture?

2. How do you feel about Kate's friendship with Marge? Would you welcome a friend like Marge or resent her intrusions into your life? What does Marge lack in her own life that Kate supplies? Conversely, what does Marge give to Kate and her family? Consider how this relationship grows and changes during the course of the story. How does Kyle factor into the friendship? Would there have been a friendship between Kate and Marge without Kyle in the picture?

3. Consider the relationships between Kate Cavanaugh and her daughter, Charlotte. Is Kate a bad mother? Can you raise an adolescent child without addressing at least some of the problems Charlotte introduces in this novel? For example, to what extent are children today at risk because of the Internet and relentless media exposure ló'