The River Is Waiting
Cut along the dashed lines and pass the cards around the table.
Where did you do most of your reading of this one, and did you find yourself needing a blanket, a snack, or a break between chapters?
Was there a small domestic detail early on (a kitchen moment, a baby waking, a thing said in passing) that made you feel instantly at home in this family?
This is a book about a man who loves his family and still cannot protect them from everything. How did it sit with you to spend so much time inside the head of someone carrying that?
Lamb writes marriage as ordinary and tender and strained all at once. What moment between the couple felt most true to you, in the way that made you wince a little?
The title puts a river in front of us, patient and waiting. What did that image comfort you with, and what did it make you uneasy about?
The novel keeps asking whether a person is more than the worst thing that happened in their life. Where in your own experience have you seen someone given (or denied) that kind of room?
Without giving anything away, there is a point where you can feel the story choosing between punishment and mercy. When you felt that turn coming, what were you quietly hoping for, and what does that hope say about you?
Lamb lets his characters survive things that would break the rest of us, and he never pretends it is tidy. By the last pages, did you feel comforted, wrung out, or both, and did you want to hand the book to someone you love or keep it to yourself for a while?