A Bloom in Winter (34 page)

12. Additionally, what is it about piloting airplanes that has Rowena so enamored, and how are those reasons different from or similar to Victoria’s own passion for the women’s suffrage movement? In what way are these women’s passions—and the reasons behind them—indicative of the limitations placed on them by their social statuses, and by society at large?

13. Were you shocked by the severity of Victoria’s sentence given her role in Mary’s crime? How did Victoria evolve while serving her sentence? Do you see this experience as formative as it was traumatizing for Victoria? In what way?

14. Additionally, how do you feel about Martha’s abandonment of Victoria in the wake of the crime? Did this color your impression of Martha, or is this in line with the type of behavior that you’d expect from her? Why?

15. Given the tenor of Kit and Victoria’s friendship in
Summerset Abbey,
did you expect romantic feelings to ever develop between them? Are you excited for the possibility of a romantic rapport between the two of them, or would you prefer that their relationship remain platonic? Why?

16. 
Summerset Abbey: Spring Awakening
is the third and final installment in the
Summerset Abbey
trilogy. Speculate on what the future holds for our three heroines, as well as the male leads. What do you anticipate will likely happen in the final tome? If you could write
Summerset Abbey: Spring Awakening,
how would you conclude these women’s stories?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. T. J. Brown drew quite a bit of inspiration for the scenes in which Victoria languishes in prison from personal accounts of suffragettes who were imprisoned (sometimes more than once!) for the cause. Visit the website
http://www.alicesuffragette.co.uk/audio.html#prisonnotes
to listen to recordings of suffragette Alice Hawkins’s own letters and notes from prison.

2. Prudence’s storyline centers on her struggle to settle into her new life as a homemaker and wife to an aspiring veterinarian, and one of her biggest obstacles is cooking. Create a dish like one Prudence would have had to learn from Muriel to serve to your book group, like meat pies or scones. Do you relate to her struggles in the kitchen after attempting these recipes?

3. Host a viewing party of the PBS series
Downton Abbey
or a similar series such as
Upstairs Downstairs.
If the
Summerset
Abbey
novels were made into a film or television series, who would you cast, and why? Which role would you most like to play?

4. Learn more about author T. J. Brown and the women of Summerset by visiting her website:
http://www.tjbrownbooks.com

Gallery Books

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Teri Brown

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First Gallery Books trade paperback edition March 2013

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4516-9905-0

ISBN 978-1-4516-9907-4 (ebook)