Small Great Things (Jodi Picoult)

I haven't done a great job of reading this summer. One reason is I seemed to have this sub-conscious need to stay focused on my husband, which meant I couldn't really get lost in a book. I tried, but I was reading a book that I couldn't quite get into and I was dragging myself through it. I finally put it aside and decided to read Small Great Things. It was a great break!

Goodreads says:

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?

Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.

With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn't offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.

My thoughts:

Right now there is some awful racial issue stuff going on in the states that totally parallel this story. It was surreal to be reading it at the same time.

It was crazy to see inside the mind of a white supremacist. Crazy.


I had to stop and take a break after this bit:


p. 377: Ruth talks about helping a mother who has just had a stillborn baby: Then I handed her a damp cloth I pressed it into her palm water shocked her into awareness, or if it was the baby. But with my hand guiding her she washed every fold and curve of her baby.She wrapped him in the blanket. She held him to her breast. Finally, with a Saab that sounded like she was tearing a piece of herself away, she offered the body of her child back to me.

.....speaking of the room in the hospital for grieving parents of newborns: I think I know now why it is called the kangaroo suite It's because even when you no longer have a child, you carry him forever