June is a central figure of this book, though we don’t hear much from her. In the beginning, she is in a car accident and her husband dies, but her daughter does not. June meets a policeman whom she ultimately marries.
Enter Shay. The story begins with his trial for the double murder of the policeman June married and her daughter, Elizabeth. Actually, the question has become – should they give him the death penalty or not? One of the jurors, Michael, doesn’t want to and is ultimately persuaded.
Fast forward 11 years. We’re now at the end of Shay’s life and he sees on the news that June’s other daughter, Claire, needs a heart transplant. Shay wants to give her his heart but he’s scheduled for lethal injection, which stops the heart, leaving it inappropriate for donation. The story centers around Shay’s court battle to change his method of execution
I am a fan of Jodi Picoult but I have to say that her books with mystical themes don’t impress me. It just doesn’t seem to suit her. In this case, there are people who think that Shay is the messiah. Or A Messiah. The saving grace for me is that there is a lot of discussion of the Gnostics and I always learn something new when books discuss the Gnostics.
It’s a great story, compellingly written as long as you ignore the mystical overtures.
I finished this at about 1 am this morning! That and the excessive amount of snow outside are why I am not at church. Well, that and the fact that I am going to a Christmas party this afternoon as well as grocery shopping and that’s enough time to leave Peggy Sue at home alone. But I digress.
I loved this book. One of Picoult’s strengths is her character development and cd was outstanding in this book. She clearly does good research too. I’ve read quite a lot of fiction about the Amish and she came up with things that I didn’t know, which is always cool.
Here’s the basic premise: Katie Fisher is accused of having a baby out of wedlock, killing it to hide it from her family (who didn’t know she was pregnant) and then lying about it. Did she do it? She claims she was never pregnant but medical tests prove otherwise. There is a dead baby but did Katie kill it?
From a psychological perspective, I have no idea if the ideas presented in the book are valid but they are definitely interesting. The conflict between Amish culture and “English” culture are also explored. It’s somewhat surprising to me to realize the depth of the “otherness” of the Amish and that Katie didn’t grasp simple concepts of the American judicial system. Her very Amish-ness could get her convicted, whether she did it or not.
This is now among my favorite Jodi Picoult books.
This was a great story.
Oddly, I found myself identifying more with the “villian” in the story than the “good guys.”
Peter Houghton is a high school junior who has had it with being bullied and goes to school one day and shoots ten of his classmates and a teacher. The story explores how it happened, what led up to the shooting and the reactions of the town.
What’s interesting to me is that no lessons were learned: despite the shooting and the deaths, those same children still bullied other children. Well, if you can call 17 year olds “children.” But a guy who was *shot* began bullying the very first day they were all back in school. It boggles the mind.
Of course bullying does not excuse the shooting but no one seemed to care about what was going on in that school and nothign was done to effect any real change.
Not shocking, that.
I didn’t finish this. I think I only got about 50 pages or so into it. It was too confusing bouncing from person to person, from time to time. I had no idea who people were or even what time they were in - it bounced back and forth from when one of the characters was a little girl to when she was a teenager but the story isn’t even really about her. Good thing I didn’t read this JP book first, or I never would have read any more.
