Discussion Topics From The Author:
1. Life during the Great Depression

2. Value of such a historical novel for perspective of current hard times

3. The Dust Bowl and other ecological issues then/now and our part in them

4. Human's relationships with and obligation to animals (and other humans)

5. Endangered/extinct species--why it matters: Old Man's sky-blanketing passenger pigeons (pp. 2, 86, 238)

6. Treatment of Blacks in those times vs. now

7. Treatment of women in those times vs. now

8. Treatment of the very elderly

9. Zoos vs. circuses - then/now

10. Tolerance of lying and stealing in desperate times

11. The unanswered questions about the Old Man's past and why the Author left us to wonder

12. Red's "bucket list": The spectre of a weak heart/short life to fuel her culture-busting dream-chasing

13. How childhood shapes us and how much power we have to change it