Book club discussion ideas for "Pilgrim's Wilderness"

My book club  (now going on 2 years!) just read and discussed Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizzia. It was a tough book to get through because of the violence and abuse perpetrated by the "main character", Papa Pilgrim, but a riveting read nevertheless, showing many examples (in those children) of the incredible resilience of humans - even after enduring the harshest conditions. 

Before my group met, I scoured the internet for discussion questions, fearing that we might get stuck on "he's such a monster"-type comments that we wouldn't talk about much else. I didn't find anything, so I wrote my own and thought I'd share them here.

1. This is a work of non-fiction that reads like a novel. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. It was suspenseful (even though most readers may know the outcome); the characters were developed over the course of the narrative... What do you think contributed to the readability of this book about a subject so dark?

2. There were many colorful characters in the book – “McCarthy Annie”, the lodge owner, the homesteaders who’d lived through the Mail Day Massacre, not to mention the Pilgrim family. Knowing how the book ends, did you find it hard to sympathize with those in Alaska who took Papa Pilgrim’s side in the beginning part of the book?At any point did you sympathize with Papa Pilgrim?

3. Kizzia goes into great depth writing about the land use issues and treating both sides pretty fairly. What did you think about the homesteaders/land-users vs. the Park Service? What about the old timers vs. the newcomers' views on "their" land?

4. The Pilgrim children, especially Elishaba, suffered heartbreaking abuse beyond what many of us can imagine, yet many of them retain their faith in god. How do you think they were able to do this when their example of spiritual leadership had been their father?

5. Robert Hale aka Papa Pilgrim went from a life of upper-middle class privilege to isolation, narcissism and madness. What were your thoughts about his life’s path? For instance, do you think he was always evil or did he slowly descend into crazytown the older he became?

6. Truman Capote said of writing another true crime non-fiction book, In Cold Blood, “This book was an important event for me. While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry.” Do you think Kizzia accomplished those things in this book?

7. The author’s relationship with his wife who is suffering from cancer, and then eventually dies from it, is a quiet aside in this story. It wasn’t integral to the telling of the Pilgrim story; what do you think it added (or didn’t) to the book?