1. On the first page of the novel, Chloe answers the door to her home, which is a shack in a squatter community populated with illegal aliens and owned by a landlord resisting pressure to sell his land to developers. What battles are waged in the book over this "last frontier"? How is the land an integral part of the novel?

2. In the second chapter, Hank teaches his class the story of two lovers, Eurydice and Orpheus. From classical mythology we know that when Eurydice died, Orpheus followed her to the underworld to ask Hades for her return. Hades agreed, on the condition that Orpheus walk ahead of Eurydice and not look back at her until they reached the earth. At the last minute Orpheus looked back and Eurydice vanished. How is this story paralleled in Hank and Chloe? Do other elements of folklore in the book have echoes in the story?

3. Ghosts, both literal and figurative, haunt the characters of this story. Hank mourns his dead sister, "the small pink ghost he got to see grow up." Chloe hears voices in the desert belonging to "people who had died long before, whose very lives had been erased by time and progress, but who weren't quite done speaking their piece." What do these and other specters from the past have to do with the present action of the story? What part do they play in all of our lives?

4. Mothers are in short supply in this novel. As the story opens, Chloe helps to deliver a foal from a dying mare. Chloe and her young friend Kit were both abandoned by their mothers. Though Hank's mother is alive, she emotionally abandoned him when his sister died. How are the characters of this novel affected by the absence of their mothers? Do they come to any resolution with their loss?

5. Chloe trains horses and teaches riding. How is she like the horses she knows so well?