1. How does your own experience shape your response to the characters in DAUGHTERS?  What moments in the novel resonate with you on a personal level?   

2. How important is the setting in DAUGHTERS?  

3. Does Kat have a good point about Delia and Bob moving into a more age-appropriate living situation? Is Delia right to refuse to abandon the farm, or do you think she is unrealistic and stubborn?

4. Meredith tells her family she’s “done” with Josh and has no intention of going back to her life in California. Do you believe she’ll stick to this? Do you feel she should try to repair her marriage? Do you think her family should respect her wishes? 

5. Do you agree with Meredith that what Delia does in heading to California is unforgiveable? Does it make it more forgivable that Delia changes course once there? 

6. What does Eloise bring to the story? Do you think it would have been the same without her youth and innocence? 

7. Bob seems like a curmudgeonly character at the start of the novel. What do you think changes him? 

8. Wylie tells Meredith that he loves her and “it’s just the way it is.” Do you feel they can have a future together? Do you hope they will? 
 
9. What does Meredith’s art reveal to you about her as a character? 

10. Wylie give Meredith the unlikely present of a scaffold. Do you view it as a symbol at the heart of the story? 

11. There are many animals in DAUGHTERS: dogs, donkeys, chickens and a horse. What role do they play in the story? 

12. Meredith notices that Delia is able to connect with her teenage pupil, Lindsey. Why do you think Delia wasn’t able to connect this way with Meredith?

13. Do you know why Meredith really gave up playing the violin? Does she know? 

14. Evan seems like the only adult in the novel who is perfectly content. Is it because he’s the only one who isn’t in a long-term relationship? Do you think he needs to “grow up”? 

15. How do you feel about the ending of the novel? And the Epilogue?