Reading | Harvesting The Heart

This is my mom's copy of the book. 

The first ten pages were lovingly wrinkled and worn;

 the rest of the pages were untouched.

Harvesting The Heart | Jodi Picoult 

If you've dabbled in the world of adult fiction in the past three decades,  you've surely heard her name. 

Jodi Picoult, rapid-fire author of family saga-style stories that shoot straight to the top of the best seller lists, without fail. 

Though occasionally and thoughtlessly attributed to the genre of "chick lit," whatever that might mean, her novels routinely target morally complex issues like abortion, autism, the Holocaust, the death penalty, school shootings, race issues, fertility issues, LGBTQ issues, and so forth. Picout writes a mean procedural plot and often weaves banging courtroom dramas into her story lines. She's funny, she's smart, she's a master of the unexpected plot twist. More than once, she's taken my breath away. 

Harvesting The Heart is the second on Picoult's long list of written works. Paige is a new mom and wife of a cardiac surgeon and - most likely because her mom abandoned Paige when she was five - has deep doubts about her ability to mother. So she runs away from her own family to reconnect with her dad and track down her long lost mom. Along the way, Paige draws on her extraordinary gift for drawing to make sense of herself, and eventually makes peace with her husband and child. 

This is a perfectly fine book. But it doesn't hold a candle to the rich complexity and shining beauty of Picoult's later works. If you start here, keep going. Picoult has grown considerably as an author and has much more to offer than Harvesting the Heart.

* * * * * 

All her life a voracious reader, my mom enjoyed a good book even more during the early days of her dementia. As the rest of her world slowly closed down, Mom fell further and deeper into the magic of a well-crafted story. The local librarians understood her journey and took to steering Mom toward novels they thought she would like. They even held back new releases from the shelves to put directly into her hands, saying, "Here, Grace. You're going to love this one."

"I was starting to see that the past might color the future, but it didn't determine it."

And Jodi Picoult's novels Mom especially loved. More than once, she'd ask me, "Have you read Jodi Picoult's latest? Oh, she's so good." 

But I never did.

It was after one of her falls that my increasingly confused mom ended up staying in a rehab facility, and lamented to me that she couldn't find anything good to read. Without even attempting to explain the magic powers of Amazon, I told her I'd take care of the problem. Shortly after my shipment of books arrived - one of them being Harvesting The Heart - I paid a visit to my mom. 

She literally beamed with delight as she thanked me for sending her the books. Every single person who passed into her room got a dose of her sunshine; "Look what my daughter sent me! My favorite author!" Mom held the book on her lap as we chatted in her room, as she was wheeled to the dining room, as she rolled in for physical therapy. "Look what my daughter sent me!" She said it a dozen times a day.

And a dozen times a day, Mom would open the book to read it. But I noticed that she always turned to the same page, near the front of the book. And no matter how long she sat in front of that page, she never turned it. After my week-long visit, she was still opening her book to the exact same page. 

"I can stand on my own in a world that is falling apart. I can stand so well, I realize, that I can support someone else."

I'm quite sure that Mom never did finish reading that book. When it came time to pack up her home, I took it with me, knowing in my bones that someday, this book deserved a read. 

It sat on my bookshelf for a long time.

This summer, I decided to read not only Harvesting The Heart but the whole Picoult catalog. 

It's hard to say 

how warm and moving I found her books to be, 

how much I enjoyed reading them one after another, 

how deeply I appreciated the gift of her work, 

how close I felt my mother's presence as I read them.

"Perhaps he'd always known that the truth of a person lies in the heart."

And now that I've finished, I can say this with certainty.

Mom, you're right. Jodi Picoult really is so good.

* * * * *

More stories about books I've read in 2024:

Books By Anthony Doerr

What My Bones Know

Books By Emily Henry

The Poisonwood Bible

Harvesting The Heart