and I am beginning to fall under her spell, the way she weaves words, characters & plot together.
Did you know.......
That Picoult named Gone with the Wind as her favorite book as a teenager, and credited
author Margaret Mitchell as inspiring her to "create a whole world out of words"
like she did. A love of books was fostered by her mother, "a teacher and an avid reader --
she was always holding a book in her hand." Picoult remembers an early memory of "learning
how to sign my name so I could get a library card."
(GreatBooksSummer.com 2013 interview)
In a 2016 NPR interview Picoult explains how the story told in Small Great Things came about:
"And then in 2012, I read a news story that came out of Flint Mich., and there was an
African-American nurse there with 20 years of labor and delivery experience who
helped deliver a baby. And in the aftermath, the father called her supervisor into the
room and asked that she not touch the baby nor anyone who looked like her. He pulled
up his sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo. There was a Post-it note left on the baby's file
that said no African-American personnel to touch this infant. And the nurse wound up
suing the hospital. She settled out of court. I hope she got a very large payout."
"But it became a seed for me that grew...What would happen if she had to make a decision
that could result in her going to trial and being defended by a white public defender who,
like me and like many people I know would never consider herself to be a racist? And
I began to think about trying to tell the story from three different points of view -- the
African-American nurse, the white public defender and the skinhead father --as they all
confronted their beliefs about power and privilege and race."
In an interview, Picoult stated " I didn't write this novel because I thought it would be fun or easy.
I wrote it because I believed it was the right thing to do, and because the things that
make us most uncomfortable are the things that teach us what we all need to know...
There is a fire raging and we have two choices: we can turn our backs, or we can try
to fight it." (jodipicoult.com)
Visit the author's website at: www.jodipicoult.com/