Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. I very much enjoyed this story. It’s told from the first-person point of view between three characters. A white-female lawyer, a male white-supremacist, and a black-female nurse. This book is about racism in today’s society and how actions of the community repress some and catapult others.
I felt the story flowed well jumping from all of these characters. The author did well giving each of them a different tone and disposition. Their views were on complete opposite ends even when the lawyer, Kennedy didn’t want to believe she was that different from Ruth, the nurse. Turk plays the role of the angry racist father and his storyline is disturbing and brutal as well as eye-opening to a culture I know nothing about. Even as a fictional story, I know authors do their research to speak honestly about communities. Not only was Turk’s background well done but I found myself really listening to Ruth. Her family dynamics are very different from mine but her love for her family was something I really held onto. Her struggles are real and words can’t express how it made me feel. Up and down, confused, cheerful, and sad might be a few words.
The only reason this is not 5 stars is that I had a hard time buying into a few points around Ruth’s relationship with her son. I also wasn’t sure about Kennedy, the lawyer’s unwillingness to hear her client when Ruth was clearly discriminated against. I also found it convenient that a white-supremacist would be so willing to work with a black-female lawyer. It goes against everything he believes in, so much so, that his hate for anyone that wasn’t like him is really what got him here in the first place. This was too convenient for me. Overall, the rest of the story is very believable and the author confirmed she got the idea based on a real-life occurrence.
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Cheers!
Melisa Peterson Lewis 