This reading group guide for Last Acts includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

[[Introduction]]

David Rizzo faces failure with an enviably hopeful resolve—even though his firearms store is failing, his health is failing, and his relationship with women, business associates, and his son are failing too, things are looking up for him. As far as he’s concerned, anything is possible in America. After his son, Nick, in recovery following a near-fatal overdose, returns home, Rizzo devises the perfect scheme to rescue his store: he and Nick will create the most compelling commercial for their family-owned gun emporium the world has ever seen. Together, Nick and Rizzo flounder about in the sublime landscape of Arizona, scraping together a life shaped equally by hope, success, and disaster.

In this insightful, funny, and heart-wrenching depiction of the opioid and gun crises, Sammartino presents a prismatic view of contemporary masculinity and American life, and the way people endeavor to survive it all.

Consider the first two lines of the book—Rizzo is brought to tears, not solely because his son has been saved, but because his son’s salvation will save his gun shop. How does this beginning work to characterize Rizzo and set the tone for the story?

The physical landscape of the American Southwest is described throughout the book in lyrical detail. How did the rich sense of place contribute to your experience of the novel?

Last Acts paints a complicated portrait of masculinity, comprising stubbornness and loneliness, but also nurturing and empathy. How do Rizzo and Nick represent both positive and negative manifestations of masculinity? What do you think the idea of “masculinity” means to each of these characters, and how are they measuring up against their own expectations for themselves?

Various characters in the book seem to believe some sort of conspiracy theory. Point to one conspiracy theory–like belief in the novel that stood out to you. What does the character’s espousal of this belief tell you about him or her?

Rizzo is described as a “guy who has stumbled beyond his prime.” In what ways has Rizzo been shaped by his mistakes, for better or for worse?

There are only a few moments that offer glimpses into Nick’s childhood. What do you think Nick was like as a child, and in your opinion, how have his environment and family shaped him into the man we meet in Last Acts?

Satire works to highlight human and societal flaws. What flaws were exposed in this novel? Which parts of the book did you read as purely satirical and which parts seemed most sober and true to life?

Nick relapses after years of sobriety. What pressures push him to relapse at that point in the novel?

In the beginning of the book, Rizzo has not seen his son for a year. Later, they go through bouts of living together and apart. Chart the shifts in their relationship. Do you think their relationship is stronger by the end of the book? Why, or why not?

The threat of death pervades the book: Nick literally dies, Rizzo struggles with hypochondria (and real-life health scares, which he largely ignores), and the opioid and gun crises loom as existential threats to them and others across the country. How do Nick’s and Rizzo’s approaches to death (their own or of those around them) differ?

“Nick liked the idea of reducing himself to a single decision, a last act” (page 178). What do you think is the “last act” Nick had in mind, and why is he attracted to this idea?

Consider the epigraph at the very beginning of the book. Who is the “errant man” (or men) in Last Acts? What does the quote mean to you, having now completed the novel? Have Rizzo and Nick finished erring by its end, or do they remain astray in errancy?

Enhance Your Book Club

Find philanthropic organizations that are working to combat the opioid and gun crises. Consider donating your group’s time or money to this cause.

Read the book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America and watch the Hulu miniseries for further depiction of the opioid crisis and its causes.