Six Questions for Your Book Club
There is a reading group guide in the back of Jetson’s Journey—six questions, one page. This is that page, out where a club can find it without buying a copy first, plus some notes on how I would actually run them and an offer to join you.
The full discussion guide is now on the book-club page—these six, plus ten more that only work once you know how it ends, and notes for whoever is running the evening: brockalston.com/bookclub.
A word before you start
These are written for people who have finished the book. Two of them point at the ending. If your club splits the novel across two meetings, the last two belong to the second one.
None of them has a right answer, and the fourth one is barely about my book at all.
One more piece of housekeeping, offered as someone who has watched it go wrong. Book clubs almost never all finish. Decide out loud, at the top of the meeting, whether you are spoiling the ending or protecting it, because the alternative is one person guarding it while somebody else cheerfully gives it away over the cheese board. My vote is to spoil it. This is not a novel that lives on its twists, and the last two questions are unanswerable if half the room is being careful.
The six questions
1 · Michael believes he’s protecting the people he loves by keeping his troubles to himself. Have you ever done the same? Where is the line between protecting someone and shutting them out?
2 · When the Parkers hand Jetson to the Sawyers, they say he “had a rough start.” How does this dog change the family—and later, how does he change the way Michael rebuilds his life in Franklin?
3 · Michael and Claire have both lost people they loved. What draws them toward each other, and what makes trusting each other so hard?
4 · Franklin almost functions as a character—Gray’s on Main, the bookshop, the neighbors who notice you. What part does community play in Michael’s healing? Is there a place like that in your own life?
5 · Michael can write the truth in his book long before he can say it out loud to Claire. Why do you think that is? Has writing, or any creative outlet, ever helped you say something you couldn’t otherwise?
6 · By the end, has Michael found peace, a second chance, redemption—or something else? What do you imagine happens next for him, Claire, and Jetson?
If you’re hosting
Three things I have learned from watching groups take a book apart.
Open with the fourth question, not the first. It is the easiest one to answer and the only one that lets people talk about their own town before they have to talk about themselves.
Save the first question for later in the evening. It is the one that gets personal, and it gets personal fast—most people in the room have done exactly what Michael does, usually recently.
Let the sixth question stay unresolved. Groups want to land somewhere. The book doesn’t, quite, and the disagreement is better than the consensus.
And if the room goes quiet on the fifth question, hand it to whoever in your club keeps a journal, writes, paints, sings, or builds things in a garage. They will have an answer ready and it will not be about Michael.
For club organizers and librarians
If you need something to paste into an email to your members, use this:
Jetson’s Journey by Brock Alston—a man loses nearly everything, drives two thousand miles east with a black Lab in the back seat, and rebuilds a life in a small Tennessee town that will not let him disappear. Remarkably Bright Creatures meets The Art of Racing in the Rain. Midwest Book Review called it uplifting, revealing, and ultimately worthy of many a book club discussion.
Paperback, hardcover, and ebook, published September 15, 2026. Librarians: it is available through standard wholesale channels, and I am glad to do a virtual visit for a library club on the same terms as any other.
I’ll join your club
I take a limited number of virtual book-club visits each season. It is a video call, your questions rather than mine, and I will answer anything except what I am working on next. If your club is reading Jetson’s Journey, ask here: brockalston.com/contact.
And if you have finished it—a review is the single most useful thing a reader can do for a debut novel. Every one of them helps the next reader find the book.
If your club wants more before it meets, there is a post on why the dog is not the point (and why he is on the cover anyway), and the Author’s Note, in full, on everything I love being on loan.
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