The Mammoth Cheese

Reading Group Guide

At the onset, we meet Leland Vaughn, Episcopal priest and town father, who rallies the town in support of a local woman who has gone through a record-breaking multiple birth. The miracle of the "Frank Eleven" unites the town and attracts nationwide attention. But when some of the infants die and concern for the family sours, he shifts the town’s focus to a second opportunity for redemption, in the form of an unlikely gift to the newly elected president: a reincarnation of a legendary Jefferson-era cheese weighing 1,235 pounds. The birth of the cheese is in the hands of Margaret Prickett, a strong-willed dairy farmer, and Leland's son, August, a Jefferson impersonator who works for Margaret -- and secretly, hopelessly loves her. Each of them places their hopes for salvation in the new undertaking, but as the idea comes to fruition, what grows in Three Chimneys is even greater than the mammoth gesture.

The life of this book is in the characters who inhabit it, for it is through their struggles that the author’s concerns are brought to bear. Leland desperately wishes to restore the town's lost vitality, but as he comes to doubt his own motives, a complicated moral question is raised for readers as well. Meanwhile, Holman shows how loyalty to the past can blur our view of the present, as Leland’s regret over the choices his shy, solitary son has made lead him to desperate measures to craft a legacy. In trying to rescue her 140-year old farm, Margaret’s foolhardy devotion to a possibly corrupt politician blinds her not only to August's love but also to dangers even closer to home. And, as he hides behind the mask of Thomas Jefferson, August’s battle between head and heart, and his arduous journey to self-actualization, will surely win over every reader. The characters' struggles lead us to ask how far we will go for self-preservation, and at what true cost.

August Vaughn asks, "What better way to learn history than to engage in a dialogue with it? Than to prod it and demand it explain itself?" The Mammoth Cheese does just that, engaging in discussions and debates over the Founding Fathers and staging its conflicts both in the world of politics and in the dark night of the individual soul. In the choices they make, these characters find themselves drafted into a battle, often pitting past against present. And as they fight through toward an uncertain future, they will undoubtedly leave readers with questions that go far beyond the novel's final pages. Elise Vogel

Commentary and Discussion Questions from the Publisher
Beautifully crafted and driven by warm, vibrant characters, The Mammoth Cheese follows the residents of rural Three Chimneys, Virginia, on their historic journey to re-create the making of the original Thomas Jefferson-era, 1,235-pound "Mammoth Cheese." As the book opens, the town is joyously celebrating the birth of the Frank Eleven (eleven babies simultaneously born to Manda and James Frank after fertility treatments) and enjoying the thrill of notoriety as reform-minded presidential hopeful Adams Brooke visits the newborns. But as autumn progresses and the babies start to die, the community seeks to redeem itself through the making and transporting of a symbolic Mammoth Cheese to Washington, as a gift for the newly elected President Brooke. The cheese is the brainchild of August Vaughn, a farmhand by day and a President Jefferson impersonator by night, and the creation of Margaret Prickett, a single mother and cheese maker trying to save her century-old family farm. As Margaret slips deeper into debt and desperation, her thirteen-year-old daughter, Polly, slides closer to an inappropriate relationship with her radical, attentive history teacher.

Sheri Holman seamlessly weaves together the lives of Three Chimneys, delving into her characters' inescapable family histories as they grapple with religion, divorce, politics, and unrequited love. The Mammoth Cheese is a triumphant exploration of the burdens and joys of rural America and the debts we owe to history, our parents, and ourselves.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

1. In this generous, lively, penetrating novel, how does Holman link the values of early America with contemporary times? Although geographically limited to a small town in Virginia (with one foray to Washington, D.C.), the book enlarges our experience on many levels. What do we learn about Thomas Jefferson? About the consequences of modern medicine? About dairy farming and cheesemaking?

2) Holman has great fun satirizing scoundrels. Who are they, and how does she skewer them? How do little lies grow into real culpability?

3) The Mammoth Cheese is startlingly original and intricately plotted. There are political shenanigans in high places and enough surprising events in Three Chimneys, Virginia, to make the novel a real page-turner. Try to trace the various plots and subplots and show how they interconnect. How are we spurred to think about the wit and complexity, venality, and potential for grandeur in small-town America?

4) In some ways the issues of the book are as fresh as today's newspaper, yet Holman resists topicality. Her story is as tireless as Our Town or To Kill a Mockingbird. Villains there are, with people betraying themselves as well as each other. But heroes emerge, too. Can you name a few?

5) The Mammoth Cheese celebrates courage to honor responsibility and mutual dependence on both the community and personal levels. How does the author posit real belief in America and possibility and bedrock values as against the meretricious? How does she convey characters with compassion instead of the I-feel-your-pain of some politicians? Do you find this a book that says despite it all, we do not have to succumb to cynicism?

6) The center that holds in this novel is the slow-rolling love affair of Margaret and August. It is a relationship of mature adults, one that's been on simmer for many years. As readers we hope against hope that these two decent people will "come to their senses" as Leland puts it. How do we grow to know and care about these characters who are both thorny individualists? How do the exigencies of farm life both bond them and separate them? What are the other things that keep them at bay? You recall that in the barn there is a moment when Margaret arrives bearing steaming coffee cups. "The shadow cast by the megalithic, suspended wheel fell over her face, giving her an almost Sibylic countenance. How mysterious and chthonic she appeared to him at this moment, as if, should he ask her to, she might very well pronounce his fate. . . . Yet, even possessed as he was, he could not declare himself directly: I love you, Margaret. Will you be my wife? Instead, he picked his words carefully, and tried his best to sound lighthearted" (p.218). In the end when they finally drop their guard, they are called "two old friends." Do you find it appropriate that Holman uses restraint to describe Margaret's revelation? "She had invested so much time and energy in Adams Brooke and his amnesty, when the last honorable man, if not in America, at least of her acquaintance, was sitting right here beside her" (p. 413).

7) "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle Jefferson had said upon his inauguration in 1801. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists" (p.185). Could such a thing be said today? August goes on to wonder "what Jefferson would have said had he lost." The connection between history and contemporary life is insistently drawn in this book. Can you find other examples of this theme in the text?

8) What do you think of the mix of charity, hucksterism, and religion as it is practiced by Pastor Vaughan? Do you think Leland is wrongheaded in his version of right-to-life for Manda? Yet what a real human being he is, with his Fibber McGhee closet and his Wall of Ancestors, on which he looks as a young man so scruffy in his clerical collar "as if they'd buttoned up a stray dog." Is it surprising that this ordinary man of failing powers becomes in the end a hero whose funeral rates even the sanctimonious vice-president of the United States?

9) A. How does Sheri Holman demonstrate the art of the unexpected in language? It may be through the offbeat adjective or verb or a wholly original image that she captures the reader. Can you find examples that struck you? Consider, for instance, Pastor Vaughan coming to terms with his ominous prognosis: "The night of Pastor Vaughan's doctor's appointment, the sky let forth a fantastic autumn thunderstorm. . . .Maybe it was easier to blame the weather than the black cat of his own mortality hunkering on his chest, stealing away his very breath" (p.234).

Or think of Margaret keeping her eyes open as August finally kisses her: "It was easy to crave a soft, spoiled girl, whose own self-love was infectious, but now she was old, and sharp as baling wire, and she wanted to see what a man looked like who was willing to kiss an electric fence" (p.414). Where else do you find Holman using words with fresh acuity?

B. How does she carefully develop symbols in the book? What are the implications of the chimneys, as well as the invasive kudzu vine? Look on page 120 where Mr. March, himself an alien here, is associated with the entangling vine.

10) Holman is Swiftian in taking current trends to satiric conclusions. How are the enormous complexities about fertility drugs presented? Is the reuctio ad absurdam of eleven babies so outlandish that we have trouble taking it seriously? How does the spiritual dilemma of Pastor Vaughan make us more involved in the problems? What do we think about a town that dives into world fame and then jumps off quickly when babies wilt and die? Are the catastrophes that swamp the feckless Franks relevant to multiple births of even three or four?

11) The idea of independence is central to the novel. How is this concept developed on many levels? Jefferson, of course, provides the philosophical framework. Do you find that this device of working learning and history into the fiction works well? (Can you think of other novels that use scholarship and history in analogous ways?) How is the quest for independence important for Margaret? For August? Polly? How does each character learn the art of compromise in seeking independence?

Do you find that this device of working learning and history into the fiction works well? (Can you think of other novels that use scholarship and history in analogous ways?)

12) How does the concept of amnesty expand in the book? Consider Margaret and other small farmers. How is the idea related to Mr. March and his father? Do we hear much about amnesty these days? What begins as a concept of forgiveness of debts for small farmers and extends to pacifists grows in the end into "a forgiveness of self, of one's own selfishness and cruelties, one's myriad small disappointments and epic failures" (p.414). Explain. Does this sound like a healthy way to forge relationships and get on with one's life? Which characters do you think this applies to?

13) Holman is a master of dialogue. She uses it brilliantly to develop character and advance plot. We really know these people through their voices. What are some outstanding examples? Think of the exchanges of the miserable Franks. Or the mundane, loving, old-marriage conversations of August's parents, the Vaughans. Or the dead-on banalities, often very funny, of teenage girls. Or the rich, hesitant talks of Margaret and August. Others?

14) Teaching is extolled as an art in the book. Polly is bright and receptive, to her peril. How? Her mother often seems punitive in raising Polly, but the dangers are there. What are they? Mr. March is undoubtedly a gifted teacher, but is he sympathetically portrayed?

15) The farmyard at times reminds us of the movie Babe, with its appealing cast of four-legged characters. Did you find that Polly's loss of her calves inevitably recalls The Yearling? Does the interaction between human beings and animals seem authentic? Were you reminded also of Flannery O'Connor stories that involve animals? How does Polly's proximity to the penned bull and the hired boy reinforce what else is going on in her life?

16) Some dreams are undeniably trashed in the novel. What are they? Consider the mighty cheese enshrouded in bunting making its way to Washington, swathed in advertisements. Or Margaret and Chapter 11. Or the shocking end of Polly's will-o'-the- wisp quest. But what is salvaged? What emerges from the dross at the end?

17) How can we justify or even absorb the outrageous, potentially tragic scene on the Potomac? Do you find it peculiarly fitting for the excesses of this mammoth cheese and everyone's expectations? How do various characters behave in absolutely characteristic ways, starting with Polly's memorializing the slogan she learned in history class?

18) August is a man of precision. His gravitas, his habit of doing things somberly, comes as a welcome corrective to the excess and hype of parts of the community. Can you think of examples? He is a deliberate person, one we welcome in our lives as well as Margaret's. Does he make you think of Atticus Finch? What are some of his warming and funny moments? Think of him, empowered from having left Margaret freshly kissed on a park bench, as he wonders what it would have been like to kiss more women. It's a deft undercutting of romance, almost a Mark Twain moment. But we cheer as this most self-effacing of men becomes an action hero when he pummels and vanquishes the man traducing Polly. Did you find it a scene of elemental power?

19) At the end, for public figures, what is the reader left to hope for? Are we forced to take solace and pride in founding fathers? Their qualities are notably lacking in the Washington of the novel. Marked by neither intelligence nor commitment, the politicians seem to be reduced to a debasement of William James's idea that truth is what works. Should a firm grounding in Jefferson and Adams as well as the Greeks and Romans that informed them be a litmus test for our leaders?

20) In interviews, Holman has said her novel could be read on two levels-as a straightforward story and as a commentary on America's recent foreign policy. What do you think Holman means by that? Do you see any parallels between Polly's coming-of-age and her country's?