18. Aunt Elner, Norma, Macky . . . Can you think of counterparts in real life? Do you know a character or two who exhibit some of their characteristics?
19. Do you agree that Aunt Elner would have made a good governor? Or that Poor Tot would make a splendid Secretary of Health and Human Services?
20. If you’re a woman, don’t you wish you could find a nightgown just like the one Macky so admired on Norma? What did it do for her?
21. How would you like a two-week vacation, all expenses paid, in Elmwood Springs, “The Most Middle Town in America.” How would you spend the time?
22. Transformations occur with fair frequency in the lives of these characters. Can you name some? Do you know of similar transformations in your own life experience?
23. “You can’t go home again,” wrote Thomas Wolfe, famously. Bobby tries it with mixed results. But can you ever get away from home, no matter how far you travel?
24. Macky eases into retirement only to find that everything rubs him the wrong way. But one gift, one wonder of modern technology, changes all that. What was it? And has that invention done the same for you?
25. How would you write the next chapter, beyond the ending of the novel, to see the surviving characters through the next phase of their lives?
Standing in the Rainbow is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc.
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2004 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc. and Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Ballantine Reader’s Guide and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com/BRC
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004094063
This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-47863-4
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