The Antidote -discussion questions

 

1. Antonina, the "Prairie Witch," stores other people's memories in her body so they can forget their pain or shame. What does the novel suggest about the difference between forgetting and healing? Is memory-erasure a mercy or a form of avoidance?
2. The novel is bookended by two real historical disasters — the Black Sunday dust storm and the Republican River flood. Why do you think Russell chose to frame magical realism within these documented catastrophes rather than a purely fictional setting?
3. Russell has said the book grapples with "settler amnesia" — the deliberate forgetting of violence against Native communities and the land itself. How does the town of Uz's literal practice of memory-erasure mirror this larger national pattern?
4. Harp Oletsky, a wheat farmer, discovers that "a hoarded blessing can become a curse" when his fields miraculously escape the drought. What do you think Russell is saying about guilt, luck, and undeserved abundance during a time of collective suffering?
5. Dell, Harp's niece, is both a basketball star and the witch's apprentice, fleeing her grief. How do her two "escapes" — sport and magic — function differently for her as coping mechanisms?
6. The New Deal photographer's camera can capture the past and possible futures, not just the present. What does this power add to the novel's meditation on storytelling and historical record-keeping?
7. The talking scarecrow is an unusual, almost folkloric presence amid otherwise grounded historical fiction. What role does it play tonally — comic relief, omen, witness — and how did it affect your reading experience?
8. By the novel's end, the surrendered memories return to their original owners. Why might Russell have chosen restoration rather than permanent forgetting as her ending? What does "we are full of days again" suggest about reckoning with the past?
9. The book has drawn comparisons to The Wizard of Oz (Uz vs. Oz) and its historical allegories about land, money, and power. Did you notice these echoes, and how do they reshape your sense of what Russell's Dust Bowl setting represents?
10. Some reviewers found the novel's blend of magical realism and social commentary powerful; others felt it left too many threads unresolved. Where did you land — did the open-endedness feel earned, or frustrating?