Week two has started! This week we will dive more fully into Madeleine's character.  We will touch upon some deep topics; identity, marriage, relationships and sexual intimacy to name a few.  Hopefully we can get some great conversation moving!

Always remember that this is a safe space to talk about real life issues and how we are being changed in this journey.  Feel free to share what the Lord is teaching you through White Heart! Even If you get something different out of the chapter than I discuss here please share! I would love to hear how each chapter spoke to your heart!

So on to chapter four!

This chapter focuses on Madeleine’s first hand exposure to the Huron Village.  She is challenged by the cultural differences between her life at Versailles, her life in New France, and now with the Huron tribe.  Have you been in a setting where the culture is world’s apart from the one you are used to? What was it like for you?  Would you have been timid like Madeleine when the communal pot of supper stew was passed around, and let it pass by you too?  When she finally dipped her fingers into the pot – that thirty other people had touched – did you smile or cringe?Madeleine faced a moral dilemma in this chapter.  Her hostess, the Reverend Mother Marie of the Incarnation expected her to bring the young student, Phillipee (or Flower Eyes, to use her Huron name)  back to the convent.  Flower Eyes had felt her soul was dying and wanted to remain with her people.  Madeleine sympathized with the child.  Madeleine felt like a hypocrite when she had to convey the nun’s message. Have you ever had to say what someone else expected, and felt that you were hypocritical?  How did you handle it?Here’s a key question that Madeleine asked herself: would the simplicity here in the New World help me discover who I was and what I held to be important?  This is one of the most important questions in my novel.  I believe that answering the question “who am I?” is a pivotal step in overcoming any kind of mental health problem, particularly one that stems from a trauma.  So today let's discuss who we are.  How would you describe yourself?  Do you feel like your circumstances or surroundings determine who you are or what you hold to be important?  

Author’s Tidbit:

On page 39 there is a description of a statue: a life-size boy who had the features of a Native American, but whom I imagined looked like Jesus. In my earlier drafts I used several hundred words describing how this statue looked, how it came to be carved, and then given as a gift to the Huron by the Ursuline Missionaries as a symbol of their intersecting cultures.  In order to keep the novel under 107,000 words, that whole section was reduced to fifty words, one of many cuts.  This cut was one of the sadder ones for me.