Chapters Included:

Chapter One: Where we meet our narrator/protagonist and discover how she was murdered.

Chapter Two: Where Susie describes her heaven and watches her family deal with her disappearance.

Chapter Three: Where we meet Ruth, and the plot thickens.

Questions to Ponder:

1. The novel begins with an epigraph about a penguin in a snow globe on Susie's father's desk. What is foreshadowed in the epigraph?
2. Our first person narrator uses a conversational tone. How does this tone affect the way the reader understands the text?
3. What is odd about the fact that "Earth" is capitalized in Susie's narratives but "heaven" is not?

Symbols to Analyze:

1. Susie uses a quotation from Juan Ramon Jimenez that states: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way" (5). What significance does this passage have in its original context?
2. Why is Susie's last name "Salmon, like the fish"?
3. Why is she murdered in a cornfield?
4. What is symbolic about the texts Susie read just before she died--Othello and To Kill a Mockingbird?
5. What is symbolic about Lindsey reading Camus's Resistance, Rebellion, and Death while Susie read Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret ? Check page 32 for the passage.
6. Susie wants to be a photographer before she's murdered. This symbol becomes an important one in the novel. What are some symbolic meanings of photography and photographs?
7. Susie's dad builds ships in bottles. Why are they symbolic?