Historical Fiction can provide a new way to connect to your own family history by exploring the stories of others. Kristin Hannah has some amazing books that have given me many things to question about my own family history. Historical Fiction also introduces me to new historical periods, people, and things that I can explore on my own. Are you ready to take your family history research, questioning, and writing to a new level by choosing a different perspective?
What You Need
A copy of Kristin Hannah’s Winter Garden.
A journal and pen or your laptop or iPad. Whatever you enjoy using to write and gather your thoughts.
Downloadable guides provided in this section.
What’s Next?
Download the Questions While You Read guide and use it while you read the novel.
Grab a journal to record your thoughts as you read and explore the questions posed in this guide designed to help you examine themes and layers of the story. Consider how the questions connect in your own life. As you read this book, record your thoughts on the characters’ stories and your own life story.
Try not to judge any of it. This might be difficult, but try to stand back and observe.
After you finish the novel, download the Post-Reading Questions & Writing Prompts guide. Then find a quiet space in which you can journal undisturbed. Be aware that these writing prompts may require you to dig deeper than you wish to go in one sitting. Take your time. Set an intention to allow your truth to flow through you onto the page to help you see clearly, the various aspects of your life and that of your family’s. Ask yourself what you might learn by working with these questions and how you might Find the Answers and closure to your own secrets, stories, and past.
Use your journal to record your thoughts to post-reading questions and writing prompts posed in this guide. Some of the questions posed here are also included in the Questions While You Read guide. I duplicate a few because your perception and answers have likely changed now that you read the book and have had time to process it.
The end of the novel contains a Reading Guide with questions Kristin created. Use those in your journal in addition to the questions posed here.
Disclaimer: The book link is an affiliate link and Amazon pays me a small sales royalty if you use it.
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