Early Leaving
A Novel
by Judy Goldman

List Price: $24.95
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0060594586
Publisher: William Morrow

Is it possible for a mother to love her child too much? This is the question that haunts Kathryne Smallwood the night before her son, Early, faces sentencing for killing another teenager.

Kathryne has devoted her life to her only child. She has made herself present in his every activity, every decision, every move, in hopes of protecting him. But it may just be this powerful force that sends her son spiraling in the opposite direction.

Critically acclaimed author Judy Goldman tells a riveting, deeply moving story of a well-to-do southern family whose smooth, easy lives are suddenly disrupted irreversibly. As Kathryne Smallwood waits for morning and her son's fate, she searches her memory for details of his life and her own to discover where she went wrong, how she could have stopped the unspeakable act her eighteen-year-old son has committed. All she ever wanted was to keep him safe and happy. Isn't that what every mother wants? Kathryne realizes, too late, that the hardest part of parenting might be knowing when to hold back. Now she must come to terms with Early's leaving and what to do when her one reason for living is gone.

Goldman presents a wise, sharp-eyed invitation to explore the nature of family and, in particular, the nature of marriage and parenting -- how we think we're doing the right thing when what we're really doing is following our own hungers.

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1. Kathryne's best friend, Joy, says, "We're only as happy as our unhappiest child." Can a mother love her child too much? When does a mother's normal concern for her child's well-being become an abnormal dependency on her child's happiness?

2. What advice would you give Kathryne when Early is a child? When he's a teenager?

3. Kathryne idolizes her mother, although she knows that "some people spend their lives railing against the way they were raised, every action a reaction to their parents, a fierce determination to do the opposite with their own children." In what ways do you parent like your parents? In what ways are you different? If you do not have children, would you consider your own parents permissive?

4. With whom do you identify more -- Kathryne or Peter? How did each of their childhoods contribute to the people they became?

5. How responsible is Peter for Early's downfall?

6. Kathryne enlarges photographs of Peter and herself, then mounts them on cardboard to use as masks for Joy's New Year's Eve Mardi Gras party. Kathryne thinks it "would be funny to use our own faces to create an illusion." In what ways is Kathryne's life an illusion? How does this fit with her love of movies?

7. How is Early dependent on Chip? How is Chip dependent on Early?

8. Must we all eventually come to terms with our limits in combating injustice? Do you agree with Peter that "we may want to do the right thing, but sometimes our own self-interest takes over"?

9. Are Kathryne and Phyllis bound to one another? Explain.

10. How inevitable was it that Peter would end up marrying Ann? Is this part of his growth, or evidence of a lack of growth?

11. How inevitable was it that Peter would end up marrying Ann? Is this part of his growth, or evidence of a lack of growth?

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"A mother goes to great lengths to defend her son in this sentimental domestic tale with a racial spin."

—Publishers Weekly

"Haunting questions of parenthood ripple through the pages of this thoughtful second novel."

—Seattle Post-Intelligencer