Significance of the Dust

When Shi-shi-etko and Shin-chi are traveling to the residential school, the dust on the road hurts their eyes and noses and is said to be following them like a snake. On the way home from the school, the dust “rose around the cattle truck like a great big butterfly.”...

What is a Miracle? Part 2

What miracle(s) happened in this story? How did Miriam’s understanding of miracles change or stay the same throughout the story? Before reading this story, you were asked to consider what a miracle is. How has your thinking about miracles changed or stayed the same by...

Bad or Good?

When Miriam and Kate go to the drive-in theater to see the apparition, Miriam wonders: Is what we did bad or good? Yes, we fooled people, but if it makes them happy and gives them hope and saves the motel and the diner, is that so bad? What do you think? Was their...

Life is Not What Happens to Us

In the sermon Miriam listens to at synagogue, the rabbi says that “[l]ife is not simply what happens to us. Life is what we do with what happens to us.” What do you think she means by this? What did Miriam and Kate do with the circumstances they were given, the...