THE GHOST MARRIAGE
At thirty-one, Kirsten has just returned to San Francisco from a bohemian year in Rome, ready to pursue a serious career as a writer and eventually, she hopes, marriage and family. When she meets Steve Beckwith, a handsome and successful attorney, she begins to see that future materialize more quickly than she’d dared to expect.
Twenty-two years later, Steve has become someone quite different from the man Kirsten first met. Unemployed and addicted to opioids, he uses money and their two children to emotionally blackmail her. The couple separates but, just after their divorce is finalized, Steve is diagnosed with colon cancer and dies within the year, leaving Kirsten with $1.5 million in debts from properties that are no longer hers. It’s only then that she finally understands: The man she married was a needy, addictive person wrapped in a shiny package.
As she fights toward recovery, Kirsten begins to receive communications from Steve in the afterlife—leading her on an unexpected path to forgiveness. The Ghost Marriage is her story of discovery: that life isn’t limited to the tangible reality we experience on this earth, and that our worst adversaries can become our greatest teachers. This is a book about life after divorce and life after death. It's a story of how forgiveness is the best revenge.
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Book Trailer for The Ghost Marriage
BOOK GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. As a memoir, The Ghost Marriage tells the story of one woman’s overcoming a seemingly impossible series of obstacles. Are there other comparable memoirs that come to mind? What distinguishes this book from those?
2. Kirsten opens the book telling the reader about Steve’s funeral. How did it affect your feelings about his character, knowing that he would die?
3. Kirsten ended up forgiving Steve a lot sooner than she expected. How did you feel about her spontaneous moment of forgiveness? Would you have been able to forgive Steve?
4. Kirsten blames herself for not seeing Steve’s dysfunction sooner and standing up to it more strongly. How would you have handled his increasingly negative behavior?
5. How did you feel about Kirsten’s decision to leave her marriage? What would you have done in her place?
6. Do you consider Steve a narcissist? What does that make Kirsten?
7. How did you feel about Kirsten’s relationship to her children? Would you have handled them differently?
8. How credible did you find Kirsten’s experiences with Steve’s paranormal communications?
9. In the end, how did you feel about Steve’s character?
10. Have you received similar messages in your own life?
11. Did Kirsten’s experiences with the medium change the way you feel about spiritual energy or life after death?
12. What did you feel was the lesson of this book?