"In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates. His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling's residents. Even those who were not inside the school that morning find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex - whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded - must decide whether or not to step down. She's torn between presiding over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter. Josie, meanwhile, claims she can't remember what happened in the last fatal minutes of Peter's rampage. Or can she? And Peter's parents, Lacy and Lewis Houghton, ceaselessly examine the past to see what they might have said or done to compel their son to such extremes. Rich with psychological and social insight, Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that has at its center a haunting question. Do we ever really know someone?"--From source other than the Library of Congress
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Contemporary domestic fiction often explores complex moral dilemmas and legal ethics, a field strongly defined by multi-perspective narratives like My Sister's Keeper. American novelist Jodi Picoult has authored twenty-nine novels translated into forty languages, building a wide readership through deeply researched stories centered on high-stakes moral choices and human relationships.
Born in Nesconset, New York, in 1966, Picoult studied creative writing at Princeton University, graduating in 1987, before earning a master's degree in education from Harvard University. She published her debut novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale, in 1992, beginning a sustained career of publishing major fiction regularly. Over three decades of writing, her books have gained broad recognition, earning accolades such as the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction, the Alex Awards from YALSA, a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America, the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit, and the Sarah Josepha Hale Award. She also holds honorary doctor of letters degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of New Haven.
In addition to her solo novels, Picoult has expanded her work into theater and young adult fiction. Co-authoring the YA novels Between the Lines and Off the Page with her daughter Samantha Van Leer, the duo adapted their books into the stage musical Between the Lines. Picoult served as co-librettist for the musical Breathe and co-adapted a musical stage version of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, which premiered in the United Kingdom in September 2022, along with developing a musical adaptation of Austenland. Active in literary advocacy, she sits on the Board of Trustees for PEN America, acts as a patron for the Carole Shields Prize for Fiction, and received the 2024 Free Speech Defender Robie Harris Author Award from the National Coalition Against Censorship. Picoult resides on a farm in New Hampshire with her husband, Tim van Leer, with whom she has three children and two grandchildren.
Picoult is known for constructing narratives around contentious ethical, legal, and social issues, frequently employing multiple point-of-view perspectives to present contrasting human arguments. Her work incorporates thorough research into legal statutes, medical procedures, historical events, and institutional frameworks, grounding character-driven family dramas in real-world debates. By placing ordinary families at the intersection of unexpected crises, her novels encourage readers to evaluate moral ambiguities from several viewpoints.
