Q: Houses are very important to the characters in Homesick Creek. Why?
A: It’s probably not coincidental that houses loom large in Homesick Creek, since I was looking for a house myself while writing it. In fact, the majority of the book was written on my laptop in the front seat of the car while my husband and I drove back and forth between Bend, Oregon, and Tacoma, Washington, hunting for a house and then painting and readying the one we found. Homesick Creek’s characters see their homes as fortresses, status symbols, and spiritual refuges. Anita suffers from house-envy; her rentals become increasingly rundown until Bob gives her a home of her own. Hack, who grew up in squalor, raises the pitch of his double-wide’s roof so that anyone seeing it will assume it’s a classier, stick-built home. Bunny seeks solace in her sewing room, and finds redemption in the sounds of her house at night.
Q: Who are your favorite Homesick Creek characters?
A: Oddly, they’re both bit players: Bunny’s mother Shirl, and Minna Tallhorse. Though otherwise very different, they’re both strong, plainspoken women with an unflinching view of the world around them, women who’ve come by what they have the hard way. The antithesis of Shirl and Minna is Hack’s mother Cherise, a morally bankrupt woman who in nearly every case chooses the easy way out. Cherise is the closest thing to a villain I’ve ever created, but even she was more sad than evil.
Q: Do you believe in good and evil?
A: Categorically? No. I believe in varying degrees of kindness, confusion, devotion, misery, and exaltation. It’s just too easy to define someone as good or bad. Good people—and I think nearly all people are, to some degree, good—commit acts of meanness, cruelty, and indifference all the time, and sometimes it’s on purpose and sometimes it isn’t. They also commit acts of grace and gratitude and kindness. And that gray area is where the really interesting things happen, for me. Call me morbid, but I’d rather write about the devoted father who left his infant son in the car all morning in the blistering sun because he forgot the child was there than about the dedicated coach who has led his boy’s Little League team to victory.
Q: So what’s next—will your next book be set in Hubbard, Oregon, too?
A: Probably not, though it will almost certainly be set somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. I find the sometimes fierce nature of the region echoes the sometimes fierce nature of the people who live there. And what could be more evocative than that?
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How would you explain Hack’s relationship with Bunny’s daughter Vinny? How does it compare with the relationship he had with his sister Katy?
2. Bunny feels that her charms, in Hack’s eyes, were mainly sexual. Is she right?
3. In what ways do Bunny and Hack look after Anita and Bob? Does their help come from deep affection, or pity?
4. What is Bob’s relationship with Warren based on—sexuality, love, weakness? Why is it so important to Bob that it be kept a secret?
5. Does Rae Macy really threaten Bunny and Hack’s marriage, as Bunny feared?
6. Why does Hack turn away from Rae when she offers herself to him?
7. Does Bob’s decision to hasten Anita’s death redeem or damn him?
8. Is Bunny’s mother, Shirl, a wise woman or a foolish one?
9. Minna Tallhorse allows Hack and Katy to remain on their own. Is she right to do so, or does she contribute to the events that culminated in Katy’s death?
10. Why does Hack decide to get in touch with Minna Tallhorse after so many years?
11. Hack finally tells Bunny about Katy. Why does he keep it secret for so long?
12. In the end, Bunny finds reasons to go on with her marriage. Is her decision one of resolve or weakness? How would you have handled the situation if you were Bunny?
13. Why do Bunny and Hack decide to raise Crystal? Who drives the decision, Hack or Bunny?
14. Is Homesick Creek a love story or a tragedy?
15. In a marriage, are there times when keeping secrets is okay, or is it always wrong? Do you keep secrets from your spouse? Why?
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DIANE HAMMOND has pursued careers in writing, editing, and public relations, and was awarded a literary fellowship by the Oregon Arts Council. Her first novel, Going to Bend, received high critical acclaim, and her work has appeared in such magazines as Yankee, Mademoiselle, and Washington Review. She and her family live in Los Angeles, California.
ALSO BY DIANE HAMMOND
Going to Bend
Homesick Creek is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2006 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Diane Hammond
Reading group guide copyright © 2006 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hammond, Diane Coplin.
Homesick creek / by Diane Hammond.
p. cm.
1. Oregon—Fiction. 2. Women—Fiction.
3. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.A6956H66 2005
813’6—dc22
2004063472
www.thereaderscircle.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42362-7
v3.0
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