A "Must-Read" For Every Parent, Student and School Faculty Members

I picked up Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes while shopping for groceries at the local market. I had absolutely no idea what the book was about but I had read another Jodi Picoult book called The Pact years earlier and had loved it. I was not to be disappointed. From the very first few pages, I was hooked on Nineteen Minutes. As the parent of a daughter about to enter high school, I found myself absolutely mesmerized by Picoult's astonishingly accurate (sometimes brutal) description of life as a teenager during a "Columbine like massacre" at a fictitious high school in small town New Hamshire. Somehow Picoult manages to capture the tragedy from all angles. You've got the bullied kid who never quite fit in, whose rage is a product of the environment he's been subjected to; you've got the jock who has no respect for anyone let alone the differences he finds in others; you've got the girl next door who blossoms into something wonderful but is torn between what is right and what is easy. And of course there are the adults surrounding them, trying desperately to make sense out of a senseless act. You know immediately, before you even get to chapter two, the pages you are going to read are filled with tragedy, grief, sorrow and sadness. As the title suggests, the drama unfolds in just nineteen minutes, but the ramifications last forever. As with all Jodi Picoult books, not everything is as it seems. I found myself changing my mind about the title characters almost every other chapter. I became enraged at times and cried at others. Nineteen Minutes is fiction, but you sure could have fooled me. It is the first book that comes to mind when anyone asks me for a book club suggestion, because I know it's not only a page turner, but a conversation starter. You will experience so many different emotions reading it. It will take you nineteen minutes to describe, but a lifetime to forget. I've heard it described as "nothing more than a fictional Columbine account." It isn't. It can stand on its own merits.