Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.... In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.

Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens - until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also to come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wring, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. and as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest friendships and families.


Again, I was rendered speechless by a work of the amazing Jodi Picoult. I'm not even going to try to write about my feelings. Because it will just end up sounding like a ....a...umm. See? Speechless. But I will say this. Picoult has encouraged and forced me to look at things from a different perspective as I've learned that I am hasty to pass judgment on others. Definitely a must read.