DISCUSSION GUIDE for SettingFires by Kate Wenner

 

Synopsis         Setting Fires is the story of Annie Fishman Waldmas, a docu-mentary filmmaker, wife, and moth-er of two young children, who uses her professional skills to un-ravel the shocking secrets behind the two fires that come to dominate and haunt her present life. The novel begins with a pair of phone calls that shatter Annie's contentment forever. The first brings news that Annie's country house in Connecticut has been destroyed by fire, in an area where two other Jewish properties have recently burned to the ground. The second call, and far more distressing, informs Annie that her beloved father— the family patriarch, burdened by a lifelong shame that Annie will eventually uncover— has been diagnosed with cancer. Gradually, as Annie and her father forge a new and closer bond, he is able to acknowledge his history of poverty, his struggle for survival, and the near-tragedy it led to. Annie's determination to help her father find peace and forgiveness before dying meshes inextricably with her determination to find and expose the anti-Semitic arsonist who threatens her own family.   Annie's passionate search reaches back four generations from the early roots of the Fishman clan in Russia and New York, to the modern day lives of Annie, her siblings, and their divorced parents. At the same time, it throws Annie's relationships with her own husband and children into chaos, and rocks the steady family life on which she has always depended for stability and support. Not until Annie has discovered and resolved the final truths— by her own wit, perseverance and self-knowledge— can she reestablish the harmony she treasures.

About the Author Kate Wenner’s debut novel Setting Fires comes on the heels of her twenty year career as a journalist, first as a free-lance reporter and editor, and then as a segment producer for the abc magazine show, “20/20.” In her fourteen years at 20/20 she won many awards for her ground breaking reporting on such issues as Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Kate is also the author of Shamba Letu, which chronicles the year she spent as a volunteer in a communal village in Tanzania, when she took a year off from her undergraduate work at Harvard. After graduating college, Kate was awarded a Michael Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship, and spent a year and a half traveling throughout Central and South America. For her early work Kate was awarded a caps Grant for Fiction from New York State. In addition to writing, Kate is devoted to her family, to contemplative Judaism, and to being outdoors.

Discussion Questions

Why is Rabbi Lowenstein’s advice so important when he tells Annie to risk leaving her husband and children to go to be with her dying father?

What do you think Abe Fishman meant by his description of himself as a "manufactured man?"

What was the impact of Abe Fishman’s shame on his relationships with his children?

How do you think the relationships among Abe’s four children were affected by their father’s secret?

What does Setting Fires show about the impact of secrets on families?

Why is Abe Fishman so deeply ashamed about an event in his childhood in which he was really more bystander than perpetrator?

What is the meaning of the Hebrew word "teshuvah" that is referred to in the novel? Does Abe truly go through a process of teshuvah?

Annie is on a hunt to come to terms with the underlying threads that connect the two fires that have had such a dramatic impact on her life. What do you think she discovers? What really connects the two fires? And how does it change her?

In one of the arsons in the novel, the Jewish family is the perpetrator; in the other arson, the Jewish family is the victim. What is similar about these fires, despite their profound differences?

What are the possible meanings of the title, Setting Fires?

What does Setting Fires say about the opportunities that exist when someone is dying?

Has a secret affected your own family?

Are there questions you would like to ask your own parents which you haven’t yet found a way to ask them? If you’ve already lost a parent, what would you have wanted to ask him or her?

Has keeping a secret from your own children affected your relationship with them in some way?

Have you ever overcome a feeling of shame by confronting a painful truth?

Is there someone you would like to ask about your family history? How can you begin that conversation? What would be your first steps?

Setting Fires by Kate Wenner ISBN: 068483748X

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