1. What does Matt mean when he tells Joe, “You’re free,” as they eat breakfast in the diner?

2. In your opinion, what is the signifi cance of the cradle?

3. Renee’s story occurs more than a decade after Matt’s, and in many ways the two characters exist in different worlds. How are their respective quests similar? How are their journeys different?

4. Why does Marissa cry on her wedding day?

5. Why do you think Matt rips the showerhead out of the wall?

6. In the novel’s fi rst chapter, Marissa claims, “There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who understand that everything matters and people who don’t understand that everything matters” (page 6). What does she mean by this? Is she serious? Use her statement as a way to think about the various characters in the book.

7. How is writing poetry different for Renee than her work writing children’s books? Why do you think she struggles so much with the former, and how does that struggle change in the course of the novel? How does Renee’s understanding of Walt Whitman’s work play a role?

8. Matt comes to the realization that “the world never just happened but rather was made by people, each and every aspect of it” (page 157). How does this realization affect his sense of personal responsibility?

9. Who was the character you most identifi ed with at the beginning of the novel? Did that change by the conclusion of the story?

10. Why do you think that, following Matt’s return, Marissa never again asked about the cradle?