Book Clubs

If your book club is reading The Day We Never Came Home, I’d love to attend and discuss the book with you. If I’m available, I’ll physically attend book clubs within an hour’s drive of the Twin Cities, and I’ll attend book clubs farther away by Zoom, anywhere in North America. If you’d like me to appear at your book club meeting, please fill out the below request form:

Book club Discussion guide for the day he never came home

  1. The Day He Never Came Home begins with the purchase of a home, ends with the launching of a business designing other peoples’ homes, and names “home” in its title. How does the concept of “home” show up throughout the book? What does home mean to Regan? What does it mean to John?

  2. This novel presents two perspectives on a marriage and a series of crimes, with readers invited to take sides or assign blame. Do you find yourself siding more with Regan, or John? Both? Neither? Who is more to blame for what happens in this book? Is one of them a villain, the other a victim, or do John and Regan have elements of both in them?

  3. After John is accused of fraud, Regan’s mother says: “You must have known something. A wife knows her husband.” What do you think Regan really knew? Was she in denial, or being kept in the dark? Does she share any complicity in John’s crimes?

  4. Even though their situation is outlandish, Regan and John face many of the same difficulties as regular couples: money concerns, balancing career and parenting, Regan doing most of the parenting while John dedicates more time to work and is rarely at home. How do the thriller elements of The Day He Never Came Home echo everyday marriage concerns for women and men?

  5. A Ponzi scheme is a fraud in which an initial lie leads to more lies, as new investors must be sought to cover the initial fraudulent investments. Outside of financial fraud, is it usually the case that a lie leads to another lie?

  6. The Day He Never Came Home raises questions about identity. John fraudulently takes on a new identity twice, but even aside from the crime of fraud, the novel asks if it is possible to change your personality and become a new or different person. What do you think? Can a person change who they are, or is there a core self that will always come back, just as John’s past caught up with him? Does Regan go through any major personality changes during the book? Is she a different person at the end of the book?

  7. John/Casey had a difficult childhood of poverty, and Regan had a difficult relationship with her parents in which she didn’t feel secure and loved. Do these characters’ emotional damage play a role in the bad decisions they make as an adult? Is this an excuse?

  8. When John and Regan are reunited toward the end of the book, Regan says she wishes John had given her the chance to know the true him. Do you think there is any way these two people could have had a happy marriage? What would they each have had to do for the story of their marriage to end well?

  9. What do you make of the epilogue? Is this a happy ending for Regan? Are you happy for her? Do you judge her for the decisions she’s made? Has she turned into John? And do you feel hopeful, or pessimistic, about the future for Regan and her children?