The Parker Inheritance

When Candice and Brandon finally solve the mystery, they learn that Reggie has become James Parker and devised the “Parker Inheritance” scheme to give money to improve the city of Lambert—but only on the condition that people recognize an injustice in the city’s past.

Is what Reggie accomplishes a form of justice, forgiveness, or revenge—or is it more than one of these things?

• What do the terms “justice,” “forgiveness,” and “revenge” mean to you?
• What past wrong (or wrongs) is Reggie trying to address?
• What would it look like to achieve justice in Lambert? What would forgiveness look like? What about revenge?
• What specific results does Reggie achieve? How do these results compare with your own ideas about justice, forgiveness, and revenge?

Teaching Suggestion: The intention of this question is to give students an opportunity to analyze a character’s motivations and whether their actions result in success or failure—as judged both against the character’s intentions and students’ own values. This will require students to find evidence of what wrongs Reggie seeks to redress and to analyze how well the outcomes in the text fit with Reggie’s intentions. It also requires them to refine their own understandings of the terms “justice,” “forgiveness,” and “revenge”; even if you are asking students to complete this prompt in writing, they may enjoy and benefit from a preliminary discussion about these terms.