1. The novel opens with Dani, Avery and Hannah each choosing to go to West Point for very different reasons. What are their motivations, and how does that set them up for disappointment (and redemption) later in the book? How did you decide where to go to college? Do you have any regrets?

2. The book cycles through each character’s perspective. Did you have a favorite? Why?

3. Have you ever visited the U.S. Military Academy at West Point? What were your perceptions about that place, and what have you learned about it through the lens of these characters that you didn’t expect? How do you think you would have coped with the rules and standards of life at West Point as an 18-year-old?

4. The girls’ basketball coach, Coach Jankovich, continually makes life at West Point even more difficult for her players. Have you ever had a coach or boss who operated out of fear and paranoia as she does? Is she the villain of the book? Or is something else (time, distance, war) a greater villain?

5. Dani, Avery and Hannah all pursue love and relationships with men in very different ways. Do any of them handle them well? Should they have done things differently?

6. Dani’s injuries set her life on a totally different path than she’d expected. How does she cope with that change over the course of the novel? Do you think she found her true path in the end? Have you ever had a moment in life when a career path closed? How did you find a new way forward?

7. For most of the book, Avery is stuck in a pattern of choosing the wrong men --- one of whom even ends up going to jail. Is she a victim? Or is she responsible for those relationships?

8. Hannah makes many of her choices in this book out of a sense of faith and duty, believing that it will all be worth it in the end. In the last scenes of the book, when she confronts God, do you believe she is losing her faith? How have you coped with your ideas of spirituality, when confronted with loss and grief?

9. The girls prove to be essentialfriends --- the kinds that help carryyou through the darkest days oflife --- as they’re each facing theirown crises. In what ways do they show up for one another in the pages of this book? What can you learn from their friendship, in the way that you relate to your friends moving forward?

10. Do you still keep in touch with your college friends? Why or why not? What about West Point set these women up for a stronger bond?