Labor and delivery nurse Ruth Taylor has more than 20 years experience. So when she does a routine checkup on a newborn, she's not sure why she gets reassigned to another patient after a few minutes. As it turns out, Ruth has done nothing wrong. However, she is African-American and the parents are white supremacists who don't want Ruth to touch their baby. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, when the baby goes into cardiac arrest and Ruth is the only nurse there, she's faced with an impossible choice: defy the parents and hospital's orders, or stand by because she's been ordered not to touch the child?
What happens next results in Ruth being charged with a serious crime. Her public defender, who is White, gives Ruth unexpected advice: not mention race in the courtroom. Trying to keep her life as normal as possible, Ruth does her best. However, as the trial moves forward and threatens to become a media sensation, it might not be an easy choice to keep the mention of race out of the courtroom, after all.
I found this to be what I expected from Jodi Picoult: page-turning, readable, good character development, and a storyline that kept me intrigued. Picoult certainly didn't shy away from making the characters of the white supremacists feel very real (i.e. the language they use is very ugly). However, true to how she usually writes, the author made some interesting character development happen, for more than one character. There are lot of things to think about in this book, and I found myself really thinking about some of the issues raised, and what some of the characters said in the story. The author's note is pretty interesting, as well, since Picoult goes into why she wrote this book and the kind of research she did. I found this book to be a good read, and pretty thought-provoking. Definitely a good book-group choice that I think would lead to some interesting discussion.
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