I came across this book in the charity section of our local library and since I’ve read a few other Jodi Picoult book – Where there is smoke and My Sister’s Keeper, I decided to give this one a go. On the surface, it’s the old Jodi Picault asking you, the reader, to pick a side in a story which borders either on the side of grieving parents who have lost a child or a nurse who could have done more to save him. But since the parents are white skinheads and neo-Nazis and the nurse is a struggling black single mom trying to bring up a decent kid in racist America, I think the odds on who we will side with are a bit skewed. Because you will be racist if you side with the parents.

Imagine if this book was written about the accidental death of a baby in a hospital under the care of a white nurse with white parents. Or a birth gone wrong like Pieces of a woman (if you haven’t seen it, I thoroughly recommend it). Take racism out of it and you still have a pretty good plot either way.

I think I would have loved this book more if it didn’t drone on and on and on about racism. It started off real well, the plot solid, the characters each with their dreams and flaws (the skinheads had more flaws than the others) and I loved how it looked into each of their lives to paint a picture. A devoted mother, a love at the edge of society, a life of violence, tragedy and happiness in the hospital. All A+ materials.

Back to the story.

A black nurse has been working in the Maternity ward for over 20 years. She’s experienced, tactful and very good with deliveries. After she does a routine check on a baby, she gets pulled aside by her boss and told never to approach that baby or that family ever again as the parents have complained about a person of her colour touching their baby. Instead of throwing out the new parents, the hospital makes a concession and puts a note in the folder that this nurse should not ever lay hands on the newborn.

After a medical emergency in a different part of the hospital happens, our nurse finds herself with the same small charge she was told not to touch or handle before. Why? because plot and convenience. In her care, the baby goes into cardiac arrest and dies and she hesitates too much before starting chest compressions. She might or might not saved the baby’s life if she started earlier. Is it the parents fault that the baby did not receive immediate care or the nurses’? The parents arrive just as the baby is undergoing resuscitation manoeuvres and they mistake the procedure with the black nurse aggressively hitting their new-born and killing him.

The hospital, eager to avoid a lawsuit, throw the nurse under the bus and the state revoke her licence. So our nurse is now unemployed and the parents go a step further and press criminal charges against her.

What I thought was a bit much was the fact that they raided her house at night and arrested her on the spot instead of summoning her at the police station for statements. That’s not how it’s done. But hey, police brutality against people of colour.

In the meantime, the new parents grieve and bury their child and ask for support from the White Supremacists who rally behind them in a cloud of arrogance and racism. The book would have been so much better if the opposing couple would have been decent. The author make it so easy to look down on them and hate them but think about this – they lost a baby. They’re entitled to point a finger and to want a scapegoat. It’s unfair what has happened and grief makes people do crazy stuff. Problem is – it’s unlikely that the reader will sympathise with this white family when they use the n-word like that. And Ruth! She’s the classic palatable Black person; light skinned, educated, inoffensive, widow of a veteran, doesn’t colour all white people with the same brush. Of course we should feel sorry for her! Of course she’s being wrongly persecuted!

The problem is that what happened would be just as wrong if Ruth were a crackhead with a criminal record. That should be the point – that racism is real and it’s wrong, period. No matter whom it’s happening to.

Written from multiple points of view – the nurse, the lawyer, the dad – the book explores each view and follows the aftermath. The bail, the prison system, the judge and jury and the media circus.

As expected the jury could not reach a conclusive verdict of negligence or manslaughter and the nurse is let go. She has the option to counter sue the hospital for racism and get a payday cashout settlement. In the end she might just have done that as she has her own clinic at the end.

The skinheads – they get some ground-breaking news – the wife was half black and white passing and she commits suicide not having the mechanisms to cope with that information and the husband remarries, drops out of the gang and erases his tattoos. He might be a better person for his next child.

Eh.

The only good part about the book were the houmous jokes and teaching people about implicit bias.

What Houmous jokes?

• there are no words to tell you hummus I love you
• I think you’re a-maize-ing
• I love you from my head tomatoes
• You’re my butter half.

I lolled.