Study Questions
1. How does June die?

2. Why does Albertine return to the reservation?

3. Why does Zelda have a low opinion of June?

4. Does everyone in the Kashpaw family have a low opinion of June?

5. Grandma Kashpaw tells a story about June and the other children (Aurelia, Gordie, and Zelda). Why does the story seem important to them now?

6. Why won’t Eli ride with King?

7. How do you know that King can be violent and untrustworthy?

8. What is Eli’s skill?

9. What does King have to be stopped from doing to June’s car?

10. Why doesn’t Albertine tell Lipsha that June was his mother?

Answers
1. June gets out of a heated, warm car that she could have driven away and walks into a snowstorm. She knows it is snowing and that she is far from town.

2. She both wants to mourn June and confront her mother for the harsh way of telling her about June’s death.

3. June let men pay her way and used her looks to get by. She also sometimes looked for wealthy men to support her, and she was a heavy drinker.

4. No. Albertine and Eli both loved her, as did Grandma Kashpaw, for being stubborn, beautiful, and determined.

5. The story is about June directing the other children to hang her. In retrospect, since it seems that she chose to walk into the snowstorm and die, it seems to imply that she may have had a death wish even as a child.

6. King drives a red Firebird bought with the insurance money from June’s death. To most of the family, the car symbolizes June, and they do not want to treat it casually.

7. He first threatens to hit Lynette and later tries to drown her. He also once shot at Lipsha and is verbally aggressive with him as well.

8. Eli is a woodsman and hunter.

9. Gordie, King’s father, has to restrain him physically in order to keep him from beating June’s car to get at Lynette, who has locked herself inside.

10. Lipsha is convinced that any good mother would have found him and raised him, and wouldn’t have abandoned him even to someone as good as Grandma Kashpaw.