FOR A GROUP
Reading group guide
Questions drawn from the themes in the story: a person against a bureaucracy, a woman in the 1960s, the desert itself, Route 66, and the cost of a road. They are prompts, not a claim that every theme is a separate historical finding.
“I write so people like Margaret aren't forgotten.” C. V. Wooster
Suggested pairings named on the Amazon listing: Nomadland, The Woman They Could Not Silence, and The Woman Who Smashed Codes.
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Mrs. Orcutt's Driveway
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More desert history from C. V. Wooster: The King of Quacks (Zzyzx) · When the Birds Go Silent (the Mojave War)
Substack
The parchment, postmarks, stamps, gilt corners, and desert sketches come from C. V. Wooster's presentation for the book. Photographs are credited where they appear. The award seals and the signed manual page are from the author's materials.
Read
The road
Visit & play
Before you meet
The book is short enough to cover in a single meeting. It runs 181 pages in the Kindle edition, or just under four hours as an audiobook. Geography matters a lot in this story, so it helps if someone in the group brings along a map of the Mojave that shows Barstow, Newberry Springs, Interstate 40 and old Route 66.
Some background for the discussion
- The interstates. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 paid for a national system of limited-access highways. Unlike Route 66, an interstate could only be entered at a planned interchange. That difference is the root of Bonnie's problem.
- The First Lady. Bonnie wrote to Lady Bird Johnson on January 13, 1965. Lady Bird Johnson was First Lady from 1963 to 1969, and she championed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Groups may want to talk about why Bonnie chose to write to her and not to a highway department.
- Historical narrative. The book is based on the record, but it tells readers that some conversations and characters are composites and that some events were shaped for continuity. That is worth a conversation of its own: how should a reader take a true story told this way?
Further questions
- Bonnie asked for very little: a road on and one off the highway. Why might a small request be harder for an institution to grant than a big one?
- Before she moved to the desert, Bonnie had been a concert harpist, a biochemistry student and a pistol instructor. How do those earlier lives show up in the way she fights?
- A neighbor described her as “a tiny thing, probably four feet seven. A real pistol,” and it has become the best-known line in the book. What does it say about how other people saw her?
- Progress for many people can mean loss for a few. Is there a road, building or development project in your own area that raised the same question?
- The author first came across Bonnie's story through a YouTube recommendation, decades after his childhood trips across the desert. What does it take for a forgotten story to be brought back?
- Letters are the main tool in this story. How would things play out if it all happened today, with email and social media?
- Which scene would you most want to read in the original documents, and why?
Going further
Groups that want to keep going can look at the National Park Service's Route 66 history pages, the Federal Highway Administration's history of the Interstate System, and the LBJ Presidential Library, where the author went through primary documents. Those sources are listed on the site's Route 66 history page.