On the Right Side of a Dream (18 page)
Rick still offers to buy Millie’s place. He says that it has become his second home.
“Same terms, same price. Whenever you’re ready.”
I think about it once in a while. It’s an offer that allows me to keep some windows open, to let impossible possibilities inside. The beat-up blue suitcase sits patiently in the back of the closet. Waiting . . .
I look out across the highway at the cool, dark-green forests of Kaylin’s Ridge. I watch the dancing raindrops on Arcadia Lake. And, beyond the forests, I remember the plains and the snow-capped Rockies and the skies that go on forever. And the summer storms that Idaho sends eastward with their lightning and thunder and rains. I treasure the way Paper Moon makes me feel. This is Juanita’s place, the home that I will always carry with me in my heart.
On the Right Side
of a Dream
A Reader’s Guide
Sheila Williams
R
EADING
G
ROUP
Q
UESTIONS AND
T
OPICS FOR
D
ISCUSSION
Reader’s Guide questions developed by Patricia Hooks Gray. Ms. Gray is a graduate of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. She taught in the Princeton, Ohio, school system and is an adjunct professor at Xavier University, where she teaches graduate- and undergraduate-level reading courses. Ms. Gray also writes units for the Core Knowledge Foundation on subjects involving reading and social studies.
1. How did fear, anger, and quiet shame nearly suffocate Juanita’s soul? What actions did she take to create an emotional balance?
2. Why can’t Juanita and Bertie get past their differences? What advice would you give them?
3. Take stock of Juanita’s life. Explain how her failures paved the way to her success and eventual happiness.
4. Do you think Peaches and Stacy have set their souls free? Were they on the right or the wrong side of their dream?
5. Colors permeated the novel and offered vivid imagery for the reader. What colors represented the different stages of Juanita’s personal development through the story?
6. How did Juanita devalue her sense of self? When did the cycle of low self-esteem break for her?
7. Would you consider Millie a modern “Renaissance” woman? If so, why?
8. Millie turned out to be a mentor for Juanita. What lessons did Juanita learn from Millie that affected her life?
9. As Juanita made changes in her life, how did she gain a sense of serenity and control? Some of her dreams turned into reality. How did she spread her “wings” and fly?
10. How did Juanita’s growth enhance her children’s lives? What is likely to happen to Rashawn?
11. Money was dangled in front of Millie and Juanita. Discuss how the decisions they made concerning money affected their lives.
12. “Money is at the root of all evil.” Should Millie have taken her child? Was it more about the money, herself, or the baby?
13. Did Hayward-Smith have every right to feel the way he did about his mother? How were love and forgiveness key in his feelings for her?
14. Jess was a rare jewel. How had Juanita found real love in him? How was he her soul mate?
15. Share how the novel exposes the internal hurts of the characters that gnawed away large bits of their hearts.
16. If you could create your ideal life, what would
you
dare to dream?
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR
S
HEILA
W
ILLIAMS
was born in Columbus, Ohio. She attended Ohio Wesleyan University and is a graduate of the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. She and her husband have two grown children and make their home in northern Kentucky.
Also by Sheila Williams
The Shade of My Own Tree
Dancing on the Edge of the Roof
On the Right Side of a Dream
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A One World Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2005 by Sheila Williams
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2005 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
One World is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, Sheila (Sheila J.)
On the right side of a dream: a novel / by Sheila Williams.
p. cm.
1. Bed and breakfast accommodations—Fiction. 2. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 3. African American women—Fiction. 4. Haunted houses—Fiction. 5. Women cooks—Fiction. 6. Montana—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.I5633O5 2005
813′.6—dc22 2004059566
eISBN: 978-0-345-48437-6
v3.0