Anne Tyler's "Saint Maybe" Trivia Quiz

Answer: a bowling ball

Lucy mails Tom his bowling ball - the first chapter of the book is called, fittingly, "The Airmail Bowling Ball". To mail it first class, which is what Lucy wanted to do, would have cost her twenty dollars and twenty-seven cents. Her future husband, Danny, told her to mail it parcel post, which was cheaper. And she did; therefore, the rest is history.

In the TV version of "Saint Maybe", Lucy was played by Mary Louise Parker, Ruth from "Fried Green Tomatoes".

Answer: Thomas

Agatha is a sullen child of six at the beginning of the book - she adores Ian's girlfriend Cicely. Thomas is three and more likable than his disagreeable sister.

Answer: Bachelor

Ian was babysitting for the children - Thomas, Agatha, and baby Daphne- when Danny arrives home, drunk, from his friend's bachelor party. Ian tells Danny that baby Daphne can't be his, and he takes his own life by driving his car into a retaining wall.

Answer: Dulcimer

If you've read the book that question shouldn't have been hard at all. Thomas named the doll, which disturbed Ian, Dulcimer, which is a variation on Thomas and Agatha's real last name, Dulcimore.

Answer: fried chicken and devil's food cake

Grandma Bedloe brings fried chicken shortly after Danny dies. Bee thinks that Lucy might be an alcoholic and asks Agatha if her mother drinks beer or wine, maybe a little cocktail now and then. The drink that really gets Lucy up and going is Coke with a little instant coffee stirred in. Maybe the taste of it is what got her up and around!

Answer: Winston

Ian's bizarre college roommate is named Winston Mills. Some of the things that Winston brings to school with him are a beer stein that tinkles "How Dry I Am" and a hand shaped butterfly chair. He also loved bad horror movies and "syrupy love comics".

Answer: Halloween

Bee telephones Ian at college and tells him that Lucy has passed away. Agatha had called her and told her that Mama wouldn't wake up. They probably could have saved her if the hospital had been called sooner, but Bee didn't want to upset the children by telling them that.

Answer: shoplifting

Ian learns this when Mrs. Myrdal, an older lady who used to watch the children, tells him. "Swiped a pure silk blouse right off the rack...red and white Italian scarf scampers into her bag." This makes Ian feel terrible because he had led Danny to believe that Lucy had a lover, which was where her expensive new clothes were coming from, and therefore that the lover was the father of Daphne.

Answer: Church of the Second Chance

The Church of the Second Chance is pastored by Reverend Emmet, a tall gangly man. A woman begins to tell the church about the death of her son in Vietnam by forgetting his parachute, and very inappropriately Ian laughs. He's imagining one of those cartoons where the guy walks off the cliff and then crashes down after walking on air for a few minutes.

Answer: Camp of the Second Chance

Ian's mother calls it Holy Roller and Camp Cottontail is the camp that the Parker children are going to. Camp Sweylokan is an actual Camp Fire camp that I went to when I was in third grade. They have the camp in Sister Myra's backyard. Agatha is disgusted with the fact they don't even have a real swimming pool - just a corrugated plastic wading pool. For Sharing Time, Agatha brings her mother's mustard seed pendant and Daphne brings her Fisher-Price lawn mower - the kind with the long thin handle and plastic dome with balls that move around inside of it. Thomas and his friends are scared to misbehave because of the rumors about the frightening Sister Audrey.

Answer: drowned her

Sister Audrey was holding her right above the wading pool and Daphne was making swimming-type motions and blowing bubbles. In the book it says that Thomas feels as if he was wound with a key - he had to yank his sister away from Sister Audrey even though he knew that she wasn't doing anything that could harm her. On the way home, Agatha asks Ian if "juice" is a bad word.

Answer: thirty-eight

She feels embarassed about turning thirty-eight because it's so close to forty. She doesn't look as old as she feels, though. Grandma Bedloe makes cake with caramel frosting for Claudia's birthday, and when Thomas refuses to eat it, she takes it as a personal affront to her. She blames it on Ian and his friends at Church of the Second Chance, believing that processed sugar is poison.

Answer: Eli Everjohn

Eli is Sister Bertha's son in law. He's described on page 204 of the paperback version as being a "cadaverously thin man in his 30's with a narrow ribbon of beard like Abraham Lincoln's". Ian finds it funny that he's a private detective, since he just doesn't seem to fit the type. Agatha and Thomas's father's name is Tom Dulcimer.

Answer: Saint Maybe

Daphne calls Ian this because he's always so cautious and careful, putting his blinker on exactly two hundred feet before he reaches the curve. She calls him this when the two of them are in the car together, behind an elderly gentleman. Ian thinks that the driver of the car is a teenager, and Daphne scolds him when she finds out it's an older man.

Answer: dermatology

Agatha married a breathtakingly handsome man named Stuart, who is also a doctor. Daphne wonders if Stuart is Agatha's one indulgence, or if she never realized how fully attractive her husband is. Most likely, it's the latter.

Answer: Rita

Rita is played in the Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of "Saint Maybe" by Melina Kanakaredes, Syd from "Providence". The two of them later marry and become parents to a baby boy that they name Joshua.

Answer: Joshua

Joshua is a source of joy in Ian's life - he spent his life being Agatha, Thomas, and Daphne's father and mother, and now he has a child of his very own.

Answer: Hearts of palm

Ian put his coat on over his pajamas, went out and bought hearts of palm for Agatha and Thomas, even though they had never tasted them before. That cured their sickness almost on contact.

Answer: Bobbeen

In the book she seems like a scary lady! :)

Answer: lives, fuss

At the end of the book, Ian relives the memory of Danny introducing Lucy to the family. "I would like you to meet the woman who changed my life..."