Light from a Distant Star

Description

Light from a Distant Star is a gripping coming-of-age story with a brutal murder at its heart and a heroine as unforgettable as Harper Lee’s “Scout.”

It is early summer and Nellie Peck is on the cusp of adolescence–gangly, awkward, full of questions, but keenly observant and wiser than many of the adults in her life. The person she most admires is her father, Benjamin, a man of great integrity. His family’s century old hardware store is failing and Nellie’s mother has had to go back to work. Nellie’s older half-sister has launched a disturbing search for her birth father. Often saddled through the long, hot days with her timid younger brother, Henry, Nellie is determined to toughen him up. And herself as well.

Three strangers enter Nellie’s protected life. Brooding Max Devaney is an ex-con who works in her surly grandfather’s junkyard. Reckless Bucky Saltonstall has just arrived from New York City to live with his elderly grandparents. And pretty Dolly Bedelia is a young stripper who rents the family’s small, rear apartment and becomes the titillating focus of Nellie’s eavesdropping.

When violence erupts in the lovely Peck house, the prime suspect seems obvious. Nellie knows who the real murderer is, but is soon silenced by fear and the threat of scandal. The truth, as she sees it, is shocking and unthinkable, and with everyone’s eyes riveted on her in the courtroom, Nellie finds herself seized with doubt.

No one will listen. No one believes her, and a man’s life hangs in the balance. A stunning evocation of innocence lost, Light from a Distant Star stands as an incredibly moving and powerful novel from one of America’s finest writers.“A timeless and timely look at small town life….Morris’ page-turner, (which evokes To Kill a Mockingbird) will satisfy her fans and send new readers searching for her earlier titles.”–The Washington Post

“Morris’ finely crafted prose—simple and lyrical—captures perfectly that sliver of pre-adolescence when the very world around us seems to shudder and shift, when the adults we admire suddenly reveal their flaws, and everything we treasure seems to be slipping away.”–Associated Press

“A timeless and timely look at small town life….Morris’ page-turner, (which evokes To Kill a Mockingbird) will satisfy her fans and send new readers searching for her earlier titles.”–Publishers Weekly 

“Mary McGarry Morris doesn’t so much tell a story as spin a delicate and powerful web. With her elegant prose, beautifully drawn characters, and perfect pitch dialog, she lured me in.  And with her intense and gripping plot, she had me ensnared.  I was in love with the sensitive, smart and plucky Nellie from the very first moment I met her and I’ll be thinking of her for a good long time.  Light From a Distant Star is a wonderful, powerful novel not to be missed.”–Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Fragile

“Literary accolades, film adaptations, praise from Oprah—Andover’s Mary McGarry Morris has earned them all for her suspenseful novels focused on small-town life.”–Boston Magazine

“It’s impossible to set aside “Light From a Distant Star” once you begin…a riveting read.”–Washington Missourian MARY MCGARRY MORRIS is a New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Vanished, a National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist; A Dangerous Woman, which was chosen by Time magazine as one of the “Five Best Novels of the Year” and was made into a major motion picture; and Songs In Ordinary Time, which was made into a CBS television movie and was an Oprah Book Club selection. She lives in Massachusetts.READING GROUP GUIDE
 
LIGHT FROM A DISTANT STAR
 
      
A note from the author:
 
In my original notes for Light From a Distant Star, the very first words written at the top of the page are “Heroism and Courage.  Story told looking back on childhood.”  Elsewhere in those seemingly random notes is the almost incomprehensible fact that when we look up at the stars we are seeing the past – and that the very light we are experiencing may well be from stars that no longer exist.  Swirling through this mix of ideas were memories of my own childhood, particularly the tree house two of my brothers built in our side yard.  I still remember it as being big and sturdy with room enough for all of us, even though a trip back home some years ago made me realize how small it actually must have been then.  But in a child’s life, refuge and safety enhance reality and magnify scale.  The tree house was our own structure, our own place to escape, in a tree that wasn’t ours on property we only rented, like the other tenants in the big old house we lived in on the corner.  Such is the thrall of a story that time, memory, and desire so easily confabulate literal truth into ideal truth, leaving one to wonder which is more necessary, more real.

1. Tolstoy’s first words in Anna Karenina are: “Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Do you think the Pecks have been a happy family? Like so many families enduring the strains of teenage rebellion and financial problems are they beginning to come undone?

2. Nellie is at a point in her life when she is in need of heroes. Until her thirteenth summer, Benjamin Peck, Nellie’s principled and upstanding father, has been her hero. What is it about Max Devaney, a brooding loner, an ex-con, that attracts Nellie when he seems to be the complete opposite of her father?

3. Why is Nellie so often drawn to edgy, offbeat people: Jessica Cooper, Bucky Saltonstall, Max Devaney, Dolly Bedelia, the Shelby twins Roy and Rodney, as well as her caustic grandfather?

4. What purpose does the hand-to-hand combat manual from World War II, “Get Tough” serve in Nellie’s quest for courage and strength? Does it give her enough confidence to confront the truth around her? 

5. Is there any connection between Ruth Peck’s search for her “real” father and her sister Nellie’s ironically similar quest?

6. The Washington Independent Book Review writes, “Boone is Nellie’s doppelganger in animal form.”  How is this apparent in the novel?

7. Nellie’s grandfather’s junkyard, both eyesore and environmental hazard, sits right in the heart of Springvale. “It’s Charlie’s now,” locals say of anything broken-down, unwanted, unfixable. Is Max veritable human trash, also unwanted, shunned, discarded? Was his youthful conviction fair?

8. Sandy Peck regrets renting the back apartment to irresponsible and sexy Dolly Bedelia. How is her unsavory tenant, like Max, another reminder of her embarrassing childhood? 

9. In what ways is Nellie very much her father’s daughter, an idealist, a romanticist? If Nellie is still an innocent, can the same be said of her father?

10. Sandy Peck loves her husband, admires his intellect and tries to be loyal, especially in the children’s presence. Is her growing impatience with Benjamin justified? And how does it affect their children? Would it help or make things worse if she were more forceful and outspoken? Should parents openly discuss financial problems with their children?

11. Why does Nellie consider her relationship with her mother so much more complicated than her relationship with her father? Is one parent more honest with her than the other? Or are her confusing feelings often typical of the mother-daughter dynamic?

12. Ruth is far more aware of Benjamin’s failings than Nellie. Are family troubles the catalyst for Ruth’s determination to contact her birth father? Or is that need, that identity crisis a natural stage in the life of an adoptee?

13. What is the significance of Tenley Humboldt’s statement that when he was bullied and humiliated as a child Benjamin stood by and did nothing?

14. Upon seeing Lazlo’s painting of the children’s tree house, Nellie thinks: “It looked like their tree house, but it didn’t.  His was a nest of boards and sticks, without nails or bolts, more image than structure. More hope than reality.  An idea that with the first strong wind would come crashing down.” Is this emblematic of Nellie’s experiences?

15. At the time of the murder trial, Nellie is faced with an overwhelming moral dilemma. She believes as sincerely in one man’s innocence as she does in another man’s guilt, though without real, tangible, scientific proof of either. So, how can she destroy one man in order to save another? Is it acceptable to tell a lie in order to live in the truth?  

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