The Secret of the Nightingale Palace (37 page)

About the book

Questions for Discussion

1. A great deal of
   The Secret of the Nightingale Palace
   focuses on grace and poise. How do these themes interact with the concepts of death, dying, and love? Do you think that Goldie effectively taught Anna about grace and poise?
   
2. There are two sets of sisters in the novel (Goldie and her sisters; Anna and Sadie). How do these sisters serve as foils for one another? Do they motivate or discourage one another?
   
3. Anna has a lot of trouble deciding what to do with Ford's wedding ring. Is it fitting that she loses it in the tea garden? Do you think she should have tried harder to find it? Should she have handled this differently?
   
4. The narrative switches between Goldie's history and Anna's present. What are the parallels between the two women? What is the effect of the reader knowing more about Goldie's past than Anna does?
   
5. Goldie has had two seemingly unfulfilling marriages: the first to Marvin (who loved her but would never be attracted to her), and the second to Saul (their marriage was described as a business relationship). How does Goldie's past influence her judgment of Anna and Ford's marriage? How does it change the reader's opinion of Goldie to find out that she and Henry have been seeing each other for all these years? Do you like her more or less?
   
6. How do the concepts of nationality, ethnicity, religion, and class play into the plot? Did this story resonate at all with your own family's/ancestors' experiences coming to America or their attitudes now?
   
7. Goldie is an interesting combination of strength and traditional values. Do you think she could be seen as a feminist character? Why? Why not?
   
8. In the wake of Ford's death, Anna struggles to come to terms with her feelings for him. Though she remembers that they were once in love, his behavior was often cruel during his illness. Does Anna ever make peace with the bitter end to their relationship? Do you think Ford's slow death is well portrayed? How did it affect Anna's ability to move on?
   
9. Goldie and Anna rebuild their relationship over the course of their journey and manage to reestablish the closeness they enjoyed in the past, too. Would you say that they have a friendship that goes beyond the fact that they are family? How does their age difference impact their understanding of each other? Do you have friends who are significantly older or younger?
   
10. The art portfolio that Henry gives to Goldie seems to have a strong effect on her. Why is she so drawn to the pictures? What is the significance of Goldie passing on the portfolio to Anna? Is there a work of art that affects you in a similar way, or that you are particularly drawn to?
    
11. Do you think that Naveen and Anna have a future together? What is it that draws her to him? Is he similar to or different from Ford? Henry? Do you agree with Goldie that there can only be one love of your life?
    

Read on

Have You Read?
More from Dana Sachs

IF YOU LIVED HERE

Forty-two-year-old Shelley Marino's desperate yearning for a child has led her to one of the only doors still open to her: foreign adoption. It is a decision that strains and ultimately shatters her relationship with her husband, Martin—the veteran of an Asian war who cannot reconcile what Shelley wants with what he knows about the world. But it unites her with Mai, who emigrated from Vietnam decades ago and has now acquired the accoutrements of the American dream in an effort to dull the memory of the tragedy that drove her from her homeland. As a powerful friendship is forged, two women embark on a life-altering journey to the world Mai left behind—to confront the stark realities of a painful past and embrace the promise of the future.

“Sachs is an expansive and generous writer who gives us, at all times, the pulse of life being lived. She's the real deal.”

—Louis Bayard, author of
Mr. Timothy
and
The Pale Blue Eye

 

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Advance Praise for The Secret of the Nightingale Palace

“In this unconventional road-trip tale about a grandmother and granddaughter crossing America to return a precious Japanese artifact obtained during WWII, Dana Sachs offers a graceful exploration of the human heart. With her signature elegance, she examines the burden of family secrets and how the complexities of culture can both divide and unite at the same time. The many nuanced moments of this hypnotic, satisfying novel will linger in your thoughts long after you finish the last page.”

—Kim Fay, author of
The Map of Lost Memories

“The Secret of the Nightingale Palace
delightfully expands the route of the American road-trip novel. Old-fashioned in the best of ways, this story of a grandmother and granddaughter—revisiting the past in order to chart the future—has all the romantic elegance of the '62 Silver Cloud in which they zoom across the country.”

—Michael Lowenthal, author of
The Paternity Test
and
Charity Girl

“Dana Sachs's beautifully written novel,
The Secret of the Nightingale Palace,
is so pitch perfect that you'll be sad when it's over. A gifted storyteller, Sachs has created a multigenerational page-turner that will keep you reading late into the night. Brilliant!”

—Celia Rivenbark, author of
New York Times
bestseller
You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

“Dana Sachs plunges us into the taut glamour of 1940s prewar San Francisco, where Goldie Rubin's relentless scrabble up from poverty unfolds a complex, unforgettable character: fearless, outrageous, and wise. Sixty-five years later, as Goldie spars with her gifted, grief-stricken granddaughter in a cross-country road trip, Sachs takes us from fury to laughter and loss to healing as the true value of a Japanese treasure is finally revealed.”

—Pamela Schoenewaldt, author of
When We Were Strangers

Also by Dana Sachs

If You Lived Here

The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of the War in Vietnam

The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam

Two Cakes Fit for a King: Folktales from Vietnam (with Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Bui Hoai Mai)

Credits

Cover design by Emin Mancheril

Cover photograph © by Oleg Oprisco/Trevillion Images

Copyright

Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to use the epigraph from
Arthur & George
by Julian Barnes published in 2006 by Knopf, an imprint of Random House.

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

THE SECRET OF THE NIGHTINGALE PALACE
. Copyright © 2013 by Dana Sachs. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-220103-4

EPUB Edition MARCH 2013 ISBN 9780062201041

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