Small Great Things

Genre: Fiction

I gave this book ***

This is the story of Ruth, an African-American, labor and delivery nurse working in a hospital in Connecticut. Ruth’s husband died while serving in the military and she has one high-school aged son. She lives a quiet life in her mostly-white neighborhood. During her shift at the hospital, Ruth encounters a white supremacist couple (Turk and Brit) and their new-born baby. They explicitly tell the charge-nurse that Ruth and any other African-Americans are not to treat their baby. When Ruth is left alone with the baby he suffers a medical emergency and she struggles with whether she should help him. The baby dies while in her care and Turk and Brit sue Ruth for wrongful death. Kennedy, a white public-defender, and married mother to a 3-year-old daughter, agrees to take on Ruth’s case. I won’t give away the outcome of the trial or the many twists and turns of the ending here, other than to say that at the end of the book, we meet Turk several years post lawsuit when he brings his young daughter for a check-up to a clinic where Ruth is her caregiver.

This story is not a light read. There are so many details that create very complex individuals and relationships. I think that overall, it’s done well. Picoult is particularly successful in her character development. She is sensitive to the nuances of language, culture and inner struggles of the African-American community. Her descriptions of the supremacist community were also real and plausible. I found the details of Turk’s life experiences and how he became so very hateful disturbing, but again, Picoult clearly identifies the very real path that someone could have walked to reach that place. I didn’t love that the story around Kennedy is long and drawn out and not entirely relevant to story, causing the middle of the book to drag on too much. That said, I think, ultimately, Picoult wrote a good story that will hopefully lead people to consider, talk and think about race relations in the U.S.