Book Club Discussion Questions and Guide for What's Worth Keeping by Kaya Mclaren

1. Carly is thrown by the possibility of a genetic disease and faced with the decision to test for it. She struggles with the pros and cons of knowing and not knowing. How would you work through a similar decision? How would you help your child through something similar? Do people have the right to live without knowing things that might affect others adversely in the future or, now that there is the ability to know, is there also the obligation to know?
2. At the very end of the book, Paul recalls his brother's future mother-in-law saying that she believes she was married three times—just all to the same man ... that if you hang on long enough, you fall in love again. Has this been the experience of anyone in your book group?
3. Amy longed to be among the big trees in the gentlest forest. Where are the places you long to return to when you need comfort?
4. Most of our lives, we are able to live in a comfortable state of denial about our vulnerability and mortality, but there are moments when we are keenly aware of it—both for ourselves and our loved ones. In those moments, what has given you the courage to face whatever life will ask of you and continue to walk forward?
5. Amy observes that in nature, that which adapts survives. What are some things in your life that you have had to adapt to in order to survive or thrive? Often adapting means letting go of attachments—not just things or people you were attached to, but perhaps more often ideas. What attachments have you had to release in order to free yourself to move forward?
6. Amy and her sister, Alicia, have a difficult relationship because of what each has chosen to believe and what establishments each has chosen to trust. Have you had similar impasses with people you love? What do you think is the best way to handle moments when a loved one oversteps and perhaps continues to overstep?
7. Amy has a negative experience in a support group and observes that, for the other women there, the experience of breast cancer has become their identity. Are there difficult experiences you've had that have become part of your identity? Was that a choice or something that happened without your awareness? What are the things that define you? What do you like—or would you like—for your identity to be based upon?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of St. Martin's Griffin. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.