1. The Gabaldón sisters lose their mother at an early age, and much of the book is about trying to regain her through recovering her memory. It is also about their attempts to find out who their late housekeeper/servant Fermina was. What dilemmas are faced by the sisters in seeking secrets from the dead? And in what ways do the dead speak to the living in this novel?

2. The WPA reports about Fermina appear as interchapters in the novel. These are written by a fieldworker who apologizes to her superior for not writing “correctly.” How does this unauthorized history work to provide connective tissue between the chapters that chronicle the sisters’ lives?

3. With the exception of Rita, the sisters are happier and stronger when they are without male partners — husbands and/or boyfriends — in their lives. In fact, Rita theorizes their “magical gifts” are diminished when they fall in love, as though men draw strength and wisdom away from the women. Bette and Sophia even perform “visitation,” helping raise one another’s fatherless children. What shapes their belief that they are better off without men? And what is gained and/or lost by this conviction?

4. The novel suggests that love is being seen for who one is in the context of family. One’s traits — strengths and weaknesses — show up only because these are what the others don’t possess. Family isn’t about getting along; rather, family is the source of self- definition: the brain, the angry one, the caretaker, and the clown. How is the Gabaldón family a microcosm of the larger cultural tensions explored in the Los Angeles area of the girls’ youth and the historic Southwest of Fermina’s past?

5. The novel reveals the horrible and hilarious ways in which siblings betray each other. They collude, create factions, and intentionally drive one another out of their minds. How do the multiple perspectives affect the complex and ever- shifting strands of familial connection and disconnection?

6. Much of the conflict in the novel arises from misunderstanding related to the idea of a “gift” or “legacy.” Attached to the idea of receiving a gift is responsibility or obligation. What does this responsibility entail for each sister?