Max has a revelation one drunken night and joins the church. Max goes to live with his wealthy brother Reid and sister-in-law Liddy, devout Christians and members of an evangelical church who are struggling with their inability to conceive. The cost of in vitro fertilization has used up their savings (they are not wealthy), and the emotional strain of Zoe’s determination and desire to force her body into motherhood has finally overwhelmed Max, who struggles with alcoholism and low self-esteem. When the novel opens, Zoe and Max have just had yet another miscarriage. For without the insight into the motives and convictions of characters on both sides of an issue, the novel will fall flat. In a country as polarized as ours, for a Democrat as active as Picoult (who gives a lot of money to various causes and institutions) it’s not always easy to make, say, the anti-abortion activist, the anti-gay-marriage minister or the school board bureaucrat banning books into sympathetic characters. The closer she gets to real life, real people, real problems, the better the novel. Picoult works hard to keep her characters from being straw men and women. She complicates already complicated dilemmas in her plots. Picoult is known for her ability to shed light on the issues affecting domestic life in America: divorce, overprotective parenting, childhood depression, families struggling with medical crises - what the New York Times once called “the literature of children in peril.” She picks an issue - in the case of her new novel, same-sex couples and the emotional and legal issues surrounding fertility procedures - and explores it from several perspectives, including legal, medical, religious, political. Her new novel, which takes on issues of fertility, same-sex marriage, the legal ownership of embryos, love, gender, insurance, alcoholism, faith, adultery and sibling rivalry, is already flying off the shelves.

“Sing You Home” is Picoult’s 18th novel the last six have each sold more than 5 million copies around the world. They are gobbled up quickly and the readers want more.

Jodi Picoult’s novels do not gather dust on the bedside table.

Sing you home book