The Moon Pool (49 page)

“You're so lucky,” Colleen said softly, almost wistfully. Then she looked stricken and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean—”

“It's okay,” Shay said. “Come on. Today, let's just cut all the shit. Me and you—we earned that, right?”

After a moment Colleen nodded. “All I meant was... Brittany and Robert, it's just so clear how much they love you. They told me you're going to cut back to half time so you can watch the new baby. I... I would give anything for Paul and Elizabeth to... well, to want to be with us, like that.”

Shay bit her lip, wondering when Colleen was going to figure it out. “There's no magic,” she said. “We don't get along any better than anyone else. Robert came home drunk Tuesday from poker and Brittany came over and stayed with me. Then they patched that up and suddenly Britt's mad at me for letting Leila watch
Real Housewives
and neither of them are speaking to me.” She smiled at the memory. Brittany had hung up on her last Thursday morning, but then that night she'd brought Leila over, since Robert had the evening shift, and they'd all done their nails after dinner. Shay had done Leila's, holding those tiny hands and dabbing at the little perfect fingernails and then doing the wave-your-hands dance with her until they were dry.

“We never fight,” Colleen said miserably. Then she took a breath. “I've decided something. When we get home I'm going to kick them out. I mean, as soon as they can find an apartment. And if Paul wants to take a break from school... well, I'm not going to stop him.”

“Damn, girl,” Shay said, holding up her hand. “You rich people are so fucked-up.” Colleen gave her a high five. And then Shay gave Colleen a quick, hard hug, pulling away before Colleen could hug her back.

Colleen stood there with her mouth open for a moment, then smiled. It wasn't much of a smile, but it was a start.

“We should probably go,” Shay said, checking her hair one last time in the mirror. She'd managed not to mess up her eye makeup yet, and she had a pocket mirror and a tube of concealer in her purse just in case. “Is Andy saving you a seat?”

“I, uh... well, I told him not to come, actually,” Colleen said. “He stayed in Boston with Elizabeth.”

Shay raised her eyebrows. There was a story there for sure, one they could get to later, when the day wound down and everyone went home. They'd take a bottle and a couple of glasses and sit out on the back porch, where Frank's dad had rigged a swing so you could watch the sunset.

“Well, all right, then,” she said, putting her hand on the door. “Turns out I don't have a date for this thing. Want to walk me to my seat?”

“It would be an honor,” Colleen said, and the two of them went out into the waiting crowd together.

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Acknowledgements

Topics and questions for discussion

Enhance your book club

A conversation with Sophie Littlefield

Sophie Littlefield

More books by Sophie Littlefield

An invitation from the publisher

THIS BOOK ASKED
more of me and took me further than any before. I am forever grateful to Barbara Poelle and Abby Zidle, my agent and editor, who encouraged me mightily before leaving me to my task—and then, when I brought back a first draft, stayed the course until it became
The Moon Pool
.

A special thank you to Heather Baror-Shapiro and Danny Baror for never giving up on me, through all these years. I'm honored to have a place in your suitcase full of stories.

Many other people helped me create this book. My thanks to Rachael Herron for helping me get the dispatch details right, and David Kozicki for law-enforcement guidance. To Susan Baker for medical information. To the real Scott Cohen, Vicki Wilson, and my pal Shay, for use of your names. To Kurt Billick for his insights into the oil industry. To the men and women working in Williston who were kind enough to share their experiences with me, including Shane Sparks, Terry Kellum Jr., Joe Mondali, and Jason Gartman.

1.  Describe and discuss how the setting of Lawton, North Dakota, evokes the major themes in Littlefield's
The Moon Pool
.

2.  Compare and contrast the two main characters, Colleen and Shay. Why might the author have created characters who differ from each other in so many ways?

3.  Which mother handles the news of her son's disappearance better at the beginning of the book? What about as events progress? How do their backgrounds help or hinder them in their efforts?

4.  Shay criticizes Colleen's parenting throughout the book, challenging her on her “helicopter parenting.” Do you think these criticisms are valid? How could Colleen have been a more effective parent given the challenges her family faced?

5.  There is a shortage of housing in Lawton, North Dakota, and Colleen and Shay have great difficulty finding a place to stay. In what other ways does the oil boom affect the community? How does the oil boom affect the mothers' search?

6.  T.L. is introduced in the third chapter with little explanation. On first meeting him, how did you imagine he might fit into the story? How did your evaluation change as the book progressed?

7.  Many theories about the boys' disappearance are advanced by people Colleen and Shay meet, as well as by their own sleuthing. Which theory did you find most convincing? Why?

8.  The North Dakota oil boom has been in the news for quite some time. How did media coverage affect your perception of the fictional town of Lawton? The Fort Mercer reservation? The quest for domestic oil?

9.  Shay and Colleen are not the only two driven to Lawton by desperation. As in real life, many rig workers seek work after losing jobs to the economic downturn, in other fields, leaving behind loved ones. What difficult decisions have people in your own life made in similar circumstances?

10.  As Shay learns about Paul's troubled history, she questions her son's choice of friends. Colleen has agonized over her son's social life for many years. Did each mother do right by her son? Have you faced similar challenges?

11.  Once the mystery has been resolved, the relationship between the mothers shifts again. How would you describe the balance of compassion, indebtedness, and blame? Does either mother “owe” the other?

12.  Though the boys are at the center of the story, they rarely appear in the book. What techniques did the author use to develop their characters? How did your evaluation of each boy change over the course of the book?

13.  Near the end of the novel, Andy makes surprising choices in dealing with the tragedy. Do you think his actions are appropriate? How do they affect his relationships with his family?

14.  In the end, all the parents in the book—Colleen, Shay, Andy, and Myron—return to lives in which they will no longer live with their children. Are they equipped for this transition? Are you optimistic about their future well-being?

See the movie
There Will Be Blood
, starring Daniel Day Lewis. It is based loosely on Upton Sinclair's book,
Oil!
. It is about a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early years of the oil business.

Read
Grapes of Wrath
–the story of the Joad family leaving Oklahoma after the “Dust Bowl” to go to California, where prospects are rumored to be better.

Another movie comes to mind–
Fargo
, starring William H. Macy and Francis McDormand. It is set in Fargo, Minnesota, whose landscape is as forbidding as that of Lawton, North Dakota. This movie by Joel and Ethan Coen features a murder.

Learn more about The Trail of Broken Treaties, a national movement that took place in 1972 to call attention to American Indian issues including treaty rights and inadequate housing.

1. What drew you to the bleak landscape of the North Dakota oil boom?

Over a year ago, I came across an article in
People
magazine about the North Dakota “man camps” where rig workers live, most of whom have left families behind in order to come find work. I was drawn to the images of these exhausted, lonely men. I decided that I had to see for myself how the overtaxed town coped with the influx of outsiders, and how the workers found the grit to get up each day and do this dangerous, difficult work.

2. Were you surprised by what you found?

Yes. I was expecting to find corruption and despair in the camps—drugs, alcoholism, grievances parlayed into violence. I had read about the skyrocketing crime statistics and the tensions introduced by the overwhelmingly high ratio of men to women.

What I found instead was a community of men, and a smattering of women, working and living together and making the best of things. They were unfailingly polite, and their greatest asset in coping with their circumstances seemed to be a sense of humor and an atmosphere of respect. I don't mean to imply that everyone I spoke to was a candidate for sainthood, only that their stories were far more relatable than I had expected.

3. How did the story—two missing boys and the mothers who come to find them—evolve after your visit?

I knew I wanted to write a suspenseful novel where the stakes were intensely personal. I often write about women, especially mothers, and those who care for the young, because a threat to a child's welfare can turn an ordinary Everywoman into a warrior.

In adding a second missing son and frantic mother, I was able to bring two very different characters together. Forcing the two mothers to interact gave me interesting opportunities to explore a variety of types of tension. I've done the protagonist-with-a-sidekick structure several times, but I enjoyed the challenge of having two main characters carry the story.

4. The mothers are very different. Are they drawn from people you know?

I was talking to my agent, Barbara Poelle, not long after I had completed a first draft, trying to hammer out some inconsistencies in Colleen and Shay's relationship, when she said something that struck a chord: “They're both you.”

Sometimes it's hard to see what's right in front of you. I had worried that I was writing caricatures, extreme examples of the women I knew in my struggling-waitress days in the Midwest and my more recent affluent-housewife days in the suburbs. Instead I was working out the shortcomings and disappointments, the hopes and expectations, that I'd experienced in both worlds. While it's not germane to the story, I think that in writing these two women and forcing them to work together, I was reconciling two very different parts of my past, figuring out what remains now that I'm no longer in either circumstance.

I've been asked which character I like more, and which is the better parent. The truth is that I feel compassion for both of them. Our circumstances give us tools as well as limitations, no matter where we come from.

5. In The Moon Pool you introduce a Native American character and explore the prejudice he and his family experience. You've written about race and class before. How does this novel break new ground?

My decision to incorporate this type of prejudice into the plot came from a chance conversation I had with some men over dinner in the “man camp.” We were brainstorming about what might cause a man to go missing from a rig, and they casually mentioned rumors that white men had stumbled onto reservation land to camp or fish, and had been pulled from their trucks and beaten.

I never found anything to substantiate these rumors, but this offhand comment reminded me that racial tension exists in rural America in a way that I don't often see living in urban Northern California. A Native American who feels exposed in a predominantly white North Dakota town would have a very different experience in a major U.S. city, and as a writer I'm interested in the emotional experience of diversity and prejudice.

6. Could the relationship between Shay and Colleen be described as a friendship? Any lessons here about relationships between adult women?

The most interesting part of writing Shay and Colleen was exploring what it means to depend on another person. They are forced to deal with issues of trust, vulnerability, honesty, and generosity, all in a very compressed time frame. I don't know how you could help becoming close to someone in those circumstances. But like many intense relationships, the line between gratitude and resentment, love and hate, is a tenuous one.

Extrapolating outward, I would say that middle-aged women are better equipped to handle the turbulence of an intense friendship than younger women in some ways: They're less apt to take things personally and more willing to take responsibility for their own feelings. Certainly, both Shay and Colleen must draw on their own life experiences to find the courage and patience to work together.