Introduction

Do you know what separates grief from insanity? Do you know why overcoming can sometimes feel like succumbing? Breathing Out the Ghost is a literary thriller that explores these questions by contrasting how people cope with loss. When Colin St. Claire's son disappears, he speeds throughout rural Michigan seeking the man he believes responsible. Unable to sleep but unwilling to rest, St. Claire soon falls prey to ghosts of memory as intangible as vapor… Until he meets an Indiana farm wife, Beverly “Sis” Pruitt, whose daughter was murdered years earlier. While St. Claire admires Sis's quiet commitment to family, she envies the heroic resolve that has turned him into the “Ahab of the interstates.” George Garrett calls Ghost “a wonderful reading experience.… [It] has all the things we look and hope for in first rate fiction.” Please visit my website contest at www.kirkcurnutt.com. Five randomly selected readers who email me about whether they are a St. Claire or a Sis will receive a free copy. Thank you, Kirk Curnutt P.S. As of March 5, 2008, Ghost is a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year in literary fiction!

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Excerpt

From “Everywhere and Nowhere at Once”
(Chapter Six of Breathing Out the Ghost by Kirk Curnutt)

NOTE: In this scene, Beverly “Sis” Pruitt and her younger sister, Martha, are walking home from the doll shop Martha owns in Franklin, Indiana. It is an early October evening, and Sis has spent the day looking for a missing child named Chance Birmage-a painful reminder for her of her daughter Patty's murder seventeen years earlier. Despite the eerie circumstances, Sis and Martha have family obligations to attend to: their grandmother, Ethel Brandywine, will soon turn 107, and the sisters have been bickering over the birthday party they've been asked to plan. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. Why, if St. Claire is so intent on finding A.J., does he become addicted to amphetamines? Does his reliance on speed affect his sense of purpose?

2. How do St. Claire’s memories of his father shape his relationship to A.J.?

3. Why does St. Claire call himself the “Ahab of the interstates”?

4. Does St. Claire’s realizing his rage is destructive alter the reader’s opinion of him? Does having this knowledge justify his actions and choices, especially towards Neve?

5. Sis finds no relief in making the quilt with other members of her Parents of Murdered Children group, as do many of the other parents. Why does she resent being admired for how she’s handled Patty’s murder?

6. Why is Heim so committed to finding St. Claire and bringing him home? How does his need to resolve A.J.’s disappearance parallel St. Claire’s?

7. In several passages, Sis reflects on the monotony of suffering, What does she mean? And how does that feeling affect her opinion of St. Claire and his search?

8. Sis, St. Claire, Pete, and the Birmage family all grieve differently. Are they judging one another? Is any one way right or wrong?

9. References to wind appear throughout the book, especially in the chapters “Idiot Wind” and “A Striving After Wind.” What does this symbolism mean to the various characters?

10. Does having Dickie-Bird Johnson narrate the chapter “Tenderloin” shine a different light on St. Claire and Heim? Do we need to hear Dickie-Bird’s perspective?

11. Sheriff Dub Ritterbush is a minor character, yet the sole focus of the chapter “Night’s Coming.” Why does his story appear between Dickie-Bird’s narrative and Heim’s effort to get back to Indiana after being abandoned by St. Claire? Which character does Dub most parallel? Why?

12. In what ways are Sis and St. Claire’s mother similar?

13. Discuss the secret Sis learns on her visit to St. Claire’s abandoned wife, Kimm. How does this knowledge affect her? The reader?

14. What role does Pete Pruitt, Sis’s husband, play in the story? Does Sis fail to understand Pete’s grieving as she feels he has failed to comprehend her sorrow?

15. Why is Grandma Brandywine’s story told in the second half of the “Apropos of Wet Snow” chapter? How do her losses in life compare to those of St. Claire and Sis?

16. Why does St. Claire confront Chance Birmage’s father, By-God Bob? What other characters in the novel does By-God resemble?

17. When Sis and Heim confront St. Claire with the selfishness of his suffering he responds with a long barrage of clichés drawn from poems and songs. What are the sources for these lines? What do they all have in common? And what is St. Claire doing when he recites them?

18. Why does Chance Birmage’s story end the way it does? How do events in his disappearance parallel those in A.J.’s?

19. Why, even after the accident with the gun in “Bears of a Bluer River,” is St. Claire unable to resolve his despair? Is he ever able to reconnect with his family?

20. Do you think Sis and Pete resolve their resentments? And what happens to Heim’s marriage after so many lies to Stephie?

21. What is the symbolism, if any, of the playground game “spidering” mentioned in the last chapter? Does this symbolism appear anywhere else in the story?

22. Why does the story end the way it does? Why is the final chapter necessary to the story?

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