A woman is caught in a gripping moral dilemma that resonates far beyond her place in time and history in #1 New York Times bestseller Jodi Picoult's latest novel.
A
young woman and her husband, admitted to hospital to have a baby,
request that their nurse be reassigned--they are white supremacists and
don't want Ruth, who is black, to touch their baby. The hospital
complies, but the baby later goes into cardiac distress when Ruth is on
duty. She hesitates before rushing in to perform CPR. When her
indecision ends in tragedy, Ruth finds herself on trial, represented by a
white public defender who warns against bringing race into the
courtroom. As the two come to develop a truer understanding of each
other's lives, they begin to doubt the beliefs they each hold most dear.
Jodi Picoult studied creative writing with Mary Morris at Princeton, and had two short stories published in Seventeen magazine
while still a student. Realism - and a profound desire to be able to
pay the rent - led Picoult to a series of different jobs following her
graduation: as a technical writer for a Wall Street brokerage firm, as a
copywriter at an ad agency, as an editor at a textbook publisher, and
as an 8th grade English teacher - before entering Harvard to pursue a
master’s in education. She married Tim Van Leer, whom she had known at
Princeton, and it was while she was pregnant with her first child that
she wrote her first novel,Songs of the Humpback Whale.
In 2003
she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction. She has
also been the recipient an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library
Services Association, sponsored by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust
and Booklist, one of ten books written for adults that have special
appeal for young adults; the Book Browse Diamond Award for novel of the
year; a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the
Romance Writers of America; Cosmopolitan magazine’s ‘Fearless Fiction’
Award 2007; Waterstone’s Author of the Year in the UK, a Vermont Green
Mountain Book Award, a Virginia Reader’s Choice Award, the Abraham
Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, and a Maryland Black-Eyed Susan
Award. She wrote five issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series for
DC Comics. Her books are translated into thirty four languages in thirty
five countries. Three – The Pact, Plain Truth, and The Tenth Circle,
have been made into television movies. My Sister’s Keeper was a
big-screen released from New Line Cinema, with Nick Cassavetes directing
and Cameron Diaz starring, which is now available in DVD. She received
an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Dartmouth College in 2010.
She and Tim and their three children live in Hanover, New Hampshire
with two Springer spaniels, two donkeys, two geese, one duck, eight
chickens, and the occasional Holstein.
http://jodipicoult.com
My Thoughts~
My mother always told me that you can't have your cake and eat it too, which is exactly what Turk Bauer wants, he doesn't want Ruth who is a black nurse to care for his baby because she is black, and yet when tragedy happens he wants her punished for what she did or didn't do. Turk needed to decide which he wanted because he couldn't have both.
I don't agree with Jodi's thought, that as a white person I'm benefiting from minor races, I lived in Virginia for seven years and I saw racism up close and personal, and it wasn't pretty. People didn't just have confederate flags because of the Civil War, they had them to make a statement, that African Americans were not welcome. One of our neighbor's said he'd shoot a black man as good as look at him.
I grew up as a Navy brat traveling and living in different states, my children also grew up as Navy brats and they don't see color, they see a person. Two of my grandchildren are part Samoan, and when I look at someone I see a person. I don't care what their race is or sexual orientation. They are a person and that is all that matters!
This book's timing is perfect. Some in America don't believe we are divided as a nation when it comes to race relations and I have to disagree. I highly recommend this book. It will make you think about it's subject matter long after you turn the last page.
This book releases on October 11, 2016. I received an electronic copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
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