The novel is structured so we meet the four men, seemingly unrelated, firstand then learn that women connected to all of them are multiple generations of one family.What do you know about the Irish "Troubles"? How does Mitchell's story enrich or change what you already knew? In the third section of the book, McCann takes us into the mind of Senator George Mitchell during the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland.How would your reading of the novel change if this section were differently arranged? What would happen to the novel if the sections concerning the women were woven directly into the stories of the men?
Book One is not chronological: after Alcock and Brown's flight in 1919, we travel back to Douglass's tour of Ireland in 1845, and then move forward once more to 1998 and Mitchell.Why do you think Lily follows Douglass to America? What does she hope to find there? Does this novel confront the impossibility of the American dream?.What do you think draws these very different people together? How do these small threads eventually create a tapestry? Douglass forms relationships with several women in the novel: we see him write home to his wife, Anna, but he also indelibly shapes the maid Lily and becomes friends with Isabel Jennings.Do you think anyone could, nowadays, make the same sort of journey they did? Why or why not? What sorts of physical challenges remain for adventurers and explorers? As Alcock and Brown fly across the Atlantic they have several close calls, including a moment when their plane spins out of control and a rough landing, all in the fierce cold and damp.Were you familiar with any or all of these figures before reading TransAtlantic? Did what you learn about them surprise you? Do you find their journeys thematically linked? In this novel, Colum McCann writes about four men: Jack Alcock, Teddy Brown, Frederick Douglass, and Senator George Mitchell.
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