Questions to Ponder can help get a conversation started after a book club gathers after reading a chosen book. The questions are also interesting to work through for any reader. These are from Leora’s Early Years, which begins with pioneer Iowans and ends during the 1920s:
Questions to Ponder
- How was life different for children when Leora was growing up? What did families do for entertainment? Would you have liked to grow up during those days?
2. Kem Luther, in Cottonwood Roots, said that Nebraska homesteaders knew there was “a line out there where the rain ended. . . We know today that this line twists its way through the heart of Nebraska like a rattlesnake. . . . But when the droughts of the nineties came it was clear that the snaking line was a sidewinder. . .” Why were the Goffs and other pioneers so unaware of the problems they could encounter? Did the newspaper ads offer them a false hope?
3. What do you think about Sherd Goff’s not allowing his older children to attend high school?
4. How would you compare women’s lives then to now? Were some things better back then?
5. A study of 1741 cases of insanity by Edward Jarvis, published by the US Commissioner of Education in 1871, concluded that “over-study” was responsible for 205 of the insanity cases. He wrote, “Education lays the foundation of a large portion of the causes of mental disorder.” How well do you think mental health was diagnosed and treated decades ago?
6. Do you suppose that Georgia Goff might have suffered from a brain tumor?
7. A person’s character is forged during their early years as they go through the blacksmithing concepts of “heating and hammering.” What might these early stories reveal about Leora’s character, where it came from? What about Clabe?
8. What do you think happened in Georgia Wilson’s first marriage? Why would she give up her first son so easily? Is it fair to conjecture this many years later?
9. Clabe and Leora’s marriage may not have been “made in heaven,” but what do you think made it work?
Leora’s Early Years is also available as an audiobook, done with Virtual Voice. You may listen to a sample below the book cover.
I hope the Leora books are being read and taught in schools!
Liz, if something like this had been taught when I was a student, I wouldn’t have avoided history classes all the way through college.
That makes sense. I was lucky to have learned from my father early on that history is the story of people.
These questions definitely bring on a lot of pondering, which should happen. A person SHOULD think deeply about our past as human beings.
Thank you, Tim. Isn’t ponder the best word? The manuscript I’m working on these days takes even more pondering!