Lost and Found (Sheehan)

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Lost & Found

1. Rocky finds that the usual platitudes about grief offer her no comfort. What are some of those platitudes...which we have all uttered to those suffering loss. In fact, what can we offer someone bereft of a loved one?

2. Describe Roxanne, or Rocky. How does she live up to her nickname? What finally enables her to gain enough composure to leave town and start again.

3. Other than Rocky (and Lloyd...we'll get to him later), which characters in Peak's Island do you most enjoy or find sympathetic—Melissa, Tess, Hill...?

4. Rocky recognizes in Melissa the type of young girl she avoided in her therapeutic practice. She sees Melissa as belonging to that "unhappy army of girls, defined by skin, bones and grit." Why did she avoid treating girls like Melissa, and what does her description of them—as bones and grit— mean?

5. Lloyd. Did you fall in love? What is it about dogs that makes them our soul mates and that enables them to heal desperately ill, troubled human beings? What is about Lloyd/ Cooper, in particular, that Rocky responds to, that helps her on her journey back to wholeness? Do other animals share dogs' therapeutic abilities?

6. Did you enjoy having the story narrated from Lloyd's point of view?

7. Discuss each of Rocky's new friends and the role each plays in her healing process. What does each of them have to offer? What does Rocky offer them in turn?

8. In the end, what does Rocky learn about her own capacity to move out of grief and reach for joy?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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