Beheld Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Myles Standish and the Defense of the Plymouth Colony and our BookBrowse Review of Beheld.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About this book

It begins with a killing. Ten years after the Mayflower struck shore on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. The Billingtons—Anglicans, outsiders, and rebels—have just about had enough. And that's when a stranger arrives. Beheld is about a murder and a trial; it's also an intimate, personal portrait of love, desire, motherhood, and friendship. The novel reframes the story of the pilgrims in historically under-recorded voices, asking whose stories get told over time, who gets believed, and who gets punished.

1. In the first pages of the novel, Alice Bradford is anticipating the arrival of a ship. The passage is also full of foreshadowing. "Everything," says Alice, "could have been a sign of what was to come" How does foreshadowing work in the book? What expectations did you have as you read? What aspects of the story were still unexpected?
2. Both John and Eleanor Billington regularly refer to the puritans of Plymouth as "hypocrites." What behaviors do the Billingtons see as hypocritical? Do you agree with their assessment?
3. The novel is written in sections from the perspectives of different characters—primarily Alice Bradford, John Billington, Eleanor Billington, and John Newcomen. (The exceptions are discussed in Question 6.) The men's sections are narrated in the third person; the women speak themselves. What is the effect of having these different perspectives and different voices? Were there voices you trusted more than others? Do the characters ever differ on the facts, or is it only their interpretations that differ?

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