This is a writer who understands her characters inside and out. Picoult knows how to tell an interesting story, and the novel moves briskly. She is charged with felony crimes, and her fate lies in the hands of the public defender Kennedy McQuarrie, a white woman. In short order, Ruth’s nursing license is suspended. The parents, as you might expect, need someone to blame.
In the end, Ruth does both, but cannot prevent serious consequences. In that moment, Ruth has to decide whether she should heed her humanity and her oath as a nurse or follow the orders she has received to stay away from the Bauer baby. Turk demands that Ruth have no interaction with the baby - but when the ward is short-handed, Ruth finds herself alone with Davis just as he stops breathing. Ruth Jefferson, a black woman with a teenage son, has been a labor and delivery nurse for more than 20 years when the white supremacists Turk and Brittany Bauer come to her maternity ward for the delivery of Brittany’s first child, a boy named Davis. “Small Great Things” is, in most ways, a classic Jodi Picoult novel - tackling contemporary social issues, creating interesting, relatable characters and presenting a gripping courtroom drama. The question is whether good intentions translate into a good novel. Picoult certainly seems to have the best of intentions. Because then, even more of us will overhear and - I hope - the conversation will spread.” She ends the note acknowledging that talking about racism is difficult but that “we who are white need to have this discussion among ourselves. Of the former, she said: “I hoped to invite these women into a process, and in return they gave me a gift: They shared their experiences of what it really feels like to be black.” There is also a lot of introspection about her presumed audience (white people) and her own racism. She details the rigorous research she did, the people she talked to, including women of color and skinheads. Picoult is savvy enough to make her position as “white and class-privileged” known from the start. In a very earnest author’s note at the end of her latest novel, “Small Great Things,” Jodi Picoult says that she has long wanted to write about American racism. SMALL GREAT THINGS By Jodi Picoult 470 pp.
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