Huge thank you to Story Embers and especially all my Knaphollow Guildlings for this forum experience! I haven’t been active here in years, but it made a HUGE impact on me in my early serious writing journey. You guys helped me learn and grow and have so much fun. I don’t know where I’d be without this community!

@taylor-clogston Yeah, I’ll agree with you that it was the necessary choice for this story. My reader brain didn’t have a problem with it. Just my writer/editor brain. XD

Thanks for putting this book club together, @daeus-lamb ! It’s been so interesting to read everyone’s perspective on this book.

I totally agree with everybody that the buildup for the disastrous night was huge and the payoff was…not. And I specifically agree with @taylor-clogston that I felt very led to believe Daisy Grace was the one who would…[Read more]

Well, I’m really late again. XD

I agree with you guys that this book did a good job of wrestling with theological questions that felt important to the characters and story. It also didn’t shy away from asking hard questions, and didn’t force an easy, immediate answer. I also appreciated that the “bad guys” weren’t unbelievers–or wouldn’t claim…[Read more]

I’m late to this one, too. XD

My one complaint about the prose is that it’s sometimes so direct. Rather than creating a picture in my mind, it creates a mental impression. I wouldn’t call that a bad thing, but I can get tired of it. Other than that, the clever phrases, especially the Biblical references that were so fitting for a pastor’s family,…[Read more]

I’m really late to this discussion, and for the most part I’d just second others’ answers. I’m somewhere between @corky and @taylorclogston when it comes to how connected the places in Dogwood felt. I pictured some connections between specific locations, but for the most part I didn’t have a strong sense of Dogwood’s real size or proportions. But…[Read more]

My favorite thing about the friendship is that it feels somehow…archetypical to me. The rich boy. The poor girl. The boy who’s half one thing, half another. It’s like a fairytale setup or some other kind of ancient story transplanted to 1970s West Virginia. Maybe I’m reading too deeply into it, though.

I do think Matt is (inadvertently) being…[Read more]

@taylorclogston I would have expected most of the book to take place in ’72, which @toklaham-veruzia confirmed. I think I’ll have to watch the rest of the story play out before I can say for sure whether I’m a fan of that technique (starting the book on the edge of the climax) or not. Like Daeus said, it did get me involved right away. The…[Read more]

How does Chris Fabry show what the story is about so thoroughly right from the start? How can we learn from this?

I second what Taylor and Caseybold have already said about this, but in addition, what I guess is the inciting event–Dickie’s phonecall and Matt’s decision to return to Dogwood–comes, what, about halfway through Chapter 1? And…[Read more]