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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. What game does Danny O'Keefe call to ask Frank and Jake to come over and play?
(a) Operation.
(b) Clue.
(c) Risk.
(d) Monopoly.

2. What word does Ruth instruct the family to use when talking about Skipper, the dead man the boys had found on the tracks?
(a) Bum.
(b) Transient.
(c) Hobo.
(d) Itinerant.

3. Where do Frank and Jake always go after they are done with their grandfather's yard work?
(a) Edna Sweeney's house.
(b) The railroad tracks.
(c) The river.
(d) Halderson's Drug Store.

4. Why do Frank and Jake look forward to Saturday dinners at their house?
(a) Because that night Gus always comes to dinner.
(b) Because their mother makes their favorite dinner: pot roast.
(c) Because their father usually cooks and often they get to eat outside.
(d) Because Ariel always brings her boyfriend Karl to dinner.

5. What object does Frank see sticking out of Danny's Uncle Warren's pocket?
(a) Skipper's photograph.
(b) Bobby Cole's eyeglasses.
(c) Ariel's necklace.
(d) Jake's rollerskate key.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is the private hospital located where Emil goes to recuperate?

2. In what month and year does the narrator's story begin?

3. What does Frank say is intended to be the highlight of the Independence Day celebration in Luther Park?

4. What does Tyler Klement do for work?

5. What topic is at the center of the large argument between Ariel and Ruth on the day of Ruth's chorale performance?

Short Essay Questions

1. What causes Frank to abruptly run away from the Indian man and to drag Jake along with him?

2. What is significant about Nathan's query to the boys about whether Gus had been winning at poker?

3. What lengths has Gus gone to in order to make sure Nathan does not know of the card games he runs in the basement of the church?

4. How does Frank convince his dad to give him the tire iron for the boys' walk home from the jail and what do they subsequently do with it?

5. How does Gus' monologue about killing a man relate to the novel's title?

6. Why is it such a significant moment when Nathan tells his sons, Frank and Jake, about the first dead body he saw in the war?

7. What is the outcome of Nathan's and Gus' search for Travis Klement, the man they know to have beaten his wife and son?

8. How does Nathan react to Father Peter's communication with him about the townspeople's problems with Ruth?

9. How does Axel's request of Jake at the hospital reveal differences between Frank and Jake?

10. During Gus' and Frank's conversation about Nathan's experiences in the war, what two sources of information does Gus warn Frank against heeding?

(see the answer keys)

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