Introduction

A young girl in a small southern town in the 80’s enlists the help of an unlikely group of friends and family to help her survive an unconventional, sometimes abusive childhood. Often left in the care of a paranoid schizophrenic uncle who lives downstairs and a psychotic uncle upstairs, the narrator stacks up a few heartbreaking observations. One child's vulnerability and resilience to forces beyond her control make a raw and colorful splash in this tenderhearted memoir. ~ A recommended read by the US Review

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Excerpt

Prologue
Bringing You Up to Speed

When my uncle Thurman started boiling frogs alive in big soup pots on the kitchen stove everyone turned a blind eye. When he pulled the tail off a rabbit while it was alive, he retold the story as something funny. It wasn’t. The problems didn’t stop there. Something in my family’s blood told them they were bad. Misfits woven together with a sanity of the sheerest design. As I grew older, I began to realize by natural deduction that something was wrong or that nothing had ever been right. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. Skinny Dipping in a Dirty Pond is composed in a style of novel writing known as Roman à clef. In this French style real life events are altered only slightly and presented as fiction. Did you like finding this out at the end? Was it compelling to learn this was a real story, about real people?

2. What did you think about the relationship between Cotton and Stan? Was it endearing? Was it part of what brought friendship to the story?

3. What was your biggest takeaway when you finished the Author’s Note and closed the book?

4. How thought-provoking did you find the book? Did the book change your opinion about any of the issues related, or did you learn something new from the characters or plot? If so, what?

5. What aspects of this story could you relate to? What aspects were completely foreign? 6. If you had to pick one character from Skinny Dipping in a Dirty Pond and make them a superhero, which character would it be and what superpower would you give them?

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