READERS GUIDE

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. If you were to tell a friend about Windchill Summer, how would you describe it without giving away a single detail of the plot?

2. Why do you think the author chose to write Cherry’s chapters in the first person while writing all the other character’s chapters in the third person?

3. From your point of view, is Cherry indeed the central character? Explain why or why not. Does another character "steal the show"?

4. If you were to pinpoint the novel’s essential theme in only a few words, what would it be?

5. Nguyen, Bean’s Vietnamese lover, could be said to represent Bean’s wartime experience, symbolic of his fears. The violent act he commits in Sweet Valley is meshed with his confused memories of her. Was Nguyen created strictly for this purpose, to serve as horrific memory, or is she a character in her own right? How believable is Bean’s distortion of reality?

6. Two women in the novel, the mothers of Cherry and Carlene, feel constricted in their marriages. Cherry’s mother, married to a very religious man, takes pleasure in jewelry, cosmetics, and movies her husband would not approve of, while Carlene’s mother is a free-spirited woman who communes with nature in order to escape. What, if anything, do you think the author is saying about the state of marriage, the essential nature of women, or the need for individualism? How do these two characters differ in these respects from Baby’s Manang?

7. In what way did the reading of Windchill Summer change your view of the Vietnam War?

8. Do you find the title of the novel an apt one?

9. While Cherry’s voice is one of wit and affability, there are other passages far more somber, such as Jerry’s letters from Vietnam or the worrisome troubled edge that Baby brings to the story. How did such variation in tone affect your reading experience?

10. How does the author use humor in this novel?

11. Which character do you find most sympathetic and why?

12. Consider the main characters as they each undergo a change or experience a revelation during the course of the novel. In what way do each of them change? Whose transformation is most dramatic? Whose is most startling or unexpected?

13. Mysticism plays a role in the understanding of Baby’s heritage. How does knowledge of her family’s past affect her?

14. Friendship is at the core of this novel, setting the stage for the exploration of trust, secrecy, loyalty, betrayal, and reunion. Is there any message about friendship that you take away from your reading of Windchill Summer?

15. Carlene’s circumstances are particularly difficult. What, given the confines of her situation, might she have done differently? Does she have other viable choices? How does her relationship with her mother shape her direction? Her relationship with Jerry?

16. What passages in the novel are especially riveting for you? In what ways does the author engage our senses?