For Reading Groups

A Guide to The Giuliana Legacy

We hope your discussions of the questions provided here will help to deepen your understanding of Julia's inheritance, the five-thousand-year-old Giuliana Legacy, and to further illucidate the novel's timeless truths and visionary characters.

1. What are the similarities between the first images of setting in the prologue and the first chapter of The Giuliana Legacy? How are the specifics of the settings important? What is the significance of the similarities? Where else in the novel do these specific images reappear?

2. Setting, time, and place are important elements in any novel. Visionary fiction expands the parameters of time and space to include, for instance, multiple lifetimes and electromagnetic ley lines. How is the opportunity for this kind of "expansion" utilized in The Giuliana Legacy? How is it thematically important?

3. Sometimes setting itself is a "character" in a novel. Without preaching ecology, one of the themes of this novel is the reclamation and preservation of Earth's abundance. Explain how and why this works in The Giuliana Legacy.

4. The battle of good and evil is often utilized as conflict and/or theme in literature. What are the dimensions and stakes of the battle of good and evil in The Giuliana Legacy? How is it typical? How is it different? How does the female protagonist make the battle different?

5. What specific qualities and characteristics make Julia the unique heroine she is? How is Anatolin different from other male protagonists?

6. Julia and Madame Racine are each women characters of great courage. What adjectives would you use to describe the courage each draws upon, for example, forthright for Julia's courage, refined for Madame Racine. How has Madame stayed grounded in her courage for such a long time? How does Julia become grounded in her courage?

7. How is heritage different from heredity? How do each affect Julia and Anatolin? Is it easier to have been taught or to discover ones heritage?

8. The Giardano Goddess is derived from the Greek Aphrodite, known to us as the Goddess of Love and Beauty, or sometimes Desire. How is Her image in The Giuliana Legacy different from the popular one? How is She more or less the Goddess of Love than the one you have read or been taught about before? How do you respond to Her more encompassing powers in The Giuliana Legacy?

9. How is "La Vecchia Religione" of Julia's family different from what comes to mind when you think of witches? How did encountering the Italian witches, the strege, in The Giuliana Legacy affirm or change your conception/perception of "witches?"

10. Is it clear to the reader from the beginning that Julia and Anatolin are soul mates? How does the reader come know this? What dimensions are added to normal sexual/emotional attraction, no matter how deep, when the attraction is also the meeting of soul mates?

11. While very little is actually known about the Sacred Marriage of ancient times, it is often portrayed today in stories involving sacrifice and sometimes dismemberment. How does the portrayal in The Giuliana Legacy contrast with what you may have read elsewhere?

Special thanks and acknowledgement to Lesley Kellas Payne,
freelance editor, for her assistance in the
preparation of this guide.