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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was in the bowl on top of the bureau in the room of the author's mother?

2. When the author's sick daughter had to be hospitalized, how many miles away was she?

3. To whom is the book "Godric" dedicated?

4. Who wrote "The Last Battle?"

5. When the dwarves are offered wine, what do they think it is?

Short Essay Questions

1. What illness did the author's daughter have and how did it affect her?

2. Describe the author's mother's bedroom in her 79th street apartment.

3. Why did the author's mother have so few friends as she got older?

4. How does the author describe his father's suicide?

5. Why does the author write "The Wizard's Tide" and what differs in the book from his childhood memory of his father's death?

6. How did author's mom respond to his fictionalized version of his father's death and how did her reaction to this fist telling affect the author's writing about the death later?

7. Why/how does the author identify with one of the stained glass images?

8. How is the author's story, our story?

9. What was on the stained glass pieces in the author's office?

10. How did the author's mother's aging affect her life?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The author talks about being as deaf about his family and himself as his mother was, even with a purse full of half or not working hearing aids. The author uses two pieces of stained glass in his office to help readers understand this time in his life. Explain how the author felt he was "deaf" about his life and how he used the stained glass pieces to convey these experiences, thoughts and feelings to readers.

Essay Topic 2

The author, in Part One, talks about loving self like you love a neighbor, also expounding on the love of God. Discuss how this information ties in with the authors warning about bleeding hearts; how he came to feel again the hush of God; and how he realized as his daughter healed, he needed healing himself because he had been "huddled" in a dark stable of his own making.

Essay Topic 3

In Part Three of the book, the author talks about the groups that meet in the basement. He specifically details what each group does or does not do. Then he states that the church could learn a lot from such groups since the church, in his opinion, is more like a dysfunctional family, while the groups operate closer to what God intended for His church. Discuss this rationale. How are the groups like families at their best, and operating closer to what God meant for the Church? How does the church resemble a dysfunctional family? What would have to happen, according to the author, for the church to have only God and themselves left?

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