Book Club Discussion Questions
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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, The Great Spokane Falls Fire of 1889 and our BookBrowse Review of Fire Season.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
- Would you consider Fire Season a Western? How does the novel fit into the genre, and how do you think it challenges it?
- What was your experience reading the Interludes and illusory Events? What do you think these magical stories add to the novel? Did they change the way you understood Barton, Quake, and Roslyn?
- In the prologue, set fourteen years before the fire that destroys Spokane Falls, a "naturalist, inventor, and statesman" named Chase gives a lecture about criminality. What did you make of Chase and the three archetypal criminals he lays out? What relation do you think these types have to the main characters in the novel?
- The novel is set in 1889, but fires and record heat waves are modern realities of climate change. Discuss the relationship between the behaviors and attitudes toward nature in Fire Season and our age of climate change. What do you think the novel is saying about the natural world and human dealings with nature?
- Barton and Quake both fall in love with Roslyn. How does each man see her? What kind of power do you think each character has in relation to one another?
- Washington Territory was admitted to the union in 1889, the same year as the Great Spokane Fire. The novel explores the fight for and against statehood, chronicling the shift from a society in which mob justice rules and power is seized by outlaws to a centralized government with the authority to subjugate its citizenry. How are these ideologies portrayed in the novel, and where do the characters fit into this discussion?
- Prescience, levitation, flying, and pyrokinesis are a few of the magical elements that run through the novel. How do you think these occult themes are related to femininity? How might there be a way for those on the margins to reclaim power from mainstream society?
- Barton, Quake, and Roslyn all must balance their individual desires and moral codes with those of the society they live in. In light of this tension, what do you think each character learns about themself? How does Roslyn balance her desire to live for herself with a responsibility to use the powerful gifts she has for good?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Penguin Books.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
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