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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When does Holly's father die?
(a) The year before Phillp's father.
(b) A year after Phillip's father.
(c) The winter before Phillip's father.
(d) He does not die.

2. Where do Alex, Phillip and Mr. Carver go after leaving the church?
(a) Back to Mr. Carver's home.
(b) To Alex's house.
(c) To the airport.
(d) To a neighborhood bar for a beer.

3. How does Phillip feel about the furnishings in his house?
(a) He is proud of them.
(b) He does not care about any of them.
(c) He is attached to them.
(d) He is angry at Holly for wanting them.

4. Where does Phillip allow Alex to park his car?
(a) Blocking the exit for Mr. Carver's car to leave.
(b) In front of the garage.
(c) At the side door of the house.
(d) Around the back of the house.

5. What is the name of the book Lewis Shackleford gives to George Carver?
(a) The Biography of Mussolini.
(b) The Autobiography of Karl Marx.
(c) My Autobiography by Benito Mussolini.
(d) My Autobiography by Abraham Lincoln.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where was Mr. Carver born?

2. What do Alex and Holly talk about when he goes to see her at her apartment?

3. Why do the Carvers move from Thornton to Nashville?

4. What happens when Mr. and Mrs. Carver, Georgie and Phillip are in St. Louis on business?

5. What do Holly and Phillip decide to do with their inheritances?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Betsy's stated reason for Father not going to see Lewis Shackleford in Chapter 11? What is the real reason?

2. In Chapter 11, Phillip allows Alex's car to remain in the driveway which blocks his father's car from exiting. What debate might be waging in his mind while he delays his father's departure?

3. In Chapter 8, Alex, Phillip and Father pull up to the house from the church. What is happening as they arrive? Why?

4. In Chapter 8, Betsy and Josephine have prepared a bed for Phillip in their father's study. However, Phillip does not stay. He leaves his father and sisters and returns to New York. Why does he not remain and defend his father against his sisters? Why does Phillip leave so hastily?

5. In Chapter 9, Phillip visits Holly in her apartment in the hopes of a reconciliation. What do the two of them talk about for the first time openly and honestly? What has happened in Holly's life during their separation?

6. While at Sunday supper with his family at Owl Mountain in Chapter 11, Phillip sees both Clara Price and Lewis Shackleford in the dining room. How does Phillip react to both of these important people?

7. In Chapter 7, Phillip compares the life he knows in his father's house in Memphis and his apartment in New York. How do the two residences differ? How does Phillip feel about the contents of his family home in Memphis and the contents of his apartment?

8. When Alex arrives in Memphis in Chapter 7, he sees his father waving to him from the runway. Describe Father's behavior upon seeing Phillip. What is happening that day? How does his father appear to Phillip?

9. In Chapter 9, both Phillip and Holly begin to understand their fathers and see them as people. Holly encourages them both to go beyond forgiveness and forgetting and aspire to true understanding. How does Phillip remember his father's life growing up?

10. When Mr. Carver dies in Chapter 12, Holly's father also dies. The two of them return to New York after the funerals, and continue their lives together there. Phillip describes them both as "serenely free spirits." What has caused him to characterize himself and Holly in this way?

(see the answer keys)

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