Introduction

A haunting story about the destructive power of secrets, The Secrets of Lake Road is an accomplished and gripping suspenseful women's fiction debut.


Jo has been hiding the truth about her role in her high school boyfriend's drowning for sixteen years. Every summer, she drops her children off with her mother at the lakeside community where she spent summers growing up, but cannot bear to stay herself; everything about the lake reminds her of the guilt she feels. For her daughter Caroline, however, the lake is a precious world apart; its familiarity and sameness comforts her every year despite the changes in her life outside its bounds. At twelve years old and caught between childhood and adolescence, she longs to win her mother's love and doesn't understand why Jo keeps running away.


Then seven-year-old Sara Starr goes missing from the community beach. Rescue workers fail to uncover any sign of her--but instead dredge up the bones Jo hoped would never be discovered, shattering the quiet lakeside community's tranquility. Caroline was one of the last people to see Sara alive on the beach, and feels responsible for her disappearance. She takes it upon herself to figure out what happened to the little girl. As Caroline searches for Sara, she uncovers the secrets her mother has been hiding, unraveling the very foundation of everything she knows about herself and her family. The Secrets of Lake Road by Karen Katchur is a riveting novel that is impossible to put down and hard to forget.

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Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

No one touched the bottom of the lake and lived. If you were lucky, you’d surface wide-eyed and frantic, babbling at the darkness, the thickness of what lay below. If you were unlucky, underwater recovery dragged the lake for your body. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1) Who is your favorite character? Why? Who is your least favorite character? Why?
2) Gram is a sharp contrast to Jo’s character. Gram wears an apron, cooks, does the laundry and grocery shopping, all the things we typically think of as a good mother doing. Is Jo’s way of store-bought cookies and take-out dinners along with her disdain for housework, make her a bad mother? Caroline seems to think so. Is this a fair assessment?
3) What parallels do you see between the main characters and the discovery of the little girl?
4) Each character discovers something about themselves. What do you think it is?
5) Do you feel Kevin is justified in his actions?
6) Jo feels that her dreams as a teenager were thwarted by motherhood. Do you think this is fair?
7) Whom do you think Jo would have chosen if the worst hadn’t happened?
8) What does the lake represent to each of the characters?
9) The lake community is insulated from the outside world in terms of geography. Would the story have worked in a more urban environment?

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