The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr

Reading Group Guide

The Secret Keeper

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. People sometimes say that, with historical fiction, we insert twenty-first-century values like “girl power” into the world of sixteenth-century women. But could that be a bit dismissive? How were women such as Kateryn Parr, Anne Askew, and Juliana St. John empowered in ways similar to and also different from contemporary women?

2. Two of the charges against both Askew and Calthorpe is that they were unnatural and unkind, mainly because they continued to use their given names in some capacity and for their forthright speech, especially where the exercise of their spiritual gifts was involved. Has that changed with, for example, women such as Anne Graham Lotz, or is there still a sense of that today?

3. Juliana felt social pressure to remain quiet about her sexual abuse, as there were messages, both overt and subtle, that she was “damaged goods” after having been assaulted and that those in power could twist the circumstances to harm her reputation as well as bring trouble to those she loved. Are today’s women equally pressured to “keep quiet” due to the shaming of society, with messages that the way they act, dress, or speak encourages rape? Or are young women today likely to speak up?

4. Why do you think most women are drawn to “bad boys” at one time or another?

5. Have you ever learned a secret that changed your life or the life of someone you know? What was it?

6. Although we come to understand why Frances St. John acted so dismissively toward her daughter, it did not undo the longing Juliana had felt her entire life. Kateryn Parr stepped in, as she did with so many others, as mother and mentor. Do you have a female mentor, or have you had a good mentor? What role did she/does she play in your life that is different from or the same as that of a mother?

7. When Kateryn Parr was mothering Juliana, she had no idea she was teaching her how to be a mother. That kindness was repaid in a way Kate could never have imagined, as Juliana then mothered Kate’s daughter, Mary. Have you known of a circumstance in which you or someone you know has given to another only to be rewarded unexpectedly in kind?

8. Juliana let her pride—her concern that Jamie would view her as unlovely if he knew the circumstances of her life—play a role in her silence. Are there issues today that women are reluctant to be forthcoming about, worried that others would view them badly, when in fact, the truth would set them free? What are some of those common issues?

9. Do you believe that prophecy is an active spiritual gift in today’s world? Why or why not?

10. In the end, the haughty Lady Seymour was reduced, herself, to begging on bended knee for the life of her husband. In the end, Juliana got the man she loved and her own child, though perhaps not the way she expected it to happen. Do you believe that people eventually “get what they deserve”?