From time to time over the course of the past year I’d see Jodi Picoult books on the shelves at my favorite Barnes & Noble, or I’d read reviews of books like My Sister’s Keeper in my "Entertainment Weekly" magazines I keep in the bathroom. But I never really thought I’d read any of her books. Nothing actually caught my eye, until last weekend.

While in Baltimore a colleague’s young daughter mentioned that Picoult had a new book dealing with a high school shooting. Was it too soon? I don’t think it was. 9/11 was more recent and they had three movies about that, and this book doesn’t attempt to be Columbine (or the plethora of other school shootings) but it does address the same issues. Upon my return to Arizona, I went on Amazon and searched for the book. I knew it was fairly new and Picoult wrote it. Scanning her titles, I came across Nineteen Minutes and immediately knew it was the correct book. No one needs to be told where she got her title.

A few days later when I opened the book to begin it, the first page said "March 6, 2007" and chills crawled up my spine as I glanced at my own watch that read "March 7, 2007". Even before I began the book, I knew it could be now. It can be here. It can be anywhere. My wife hated high school and I, personally, relive it daily, but what would happen in this book? It began with a journal entry from Peter Houghton, a slight boy who was terminally teased in a small New Hampshire town by everyone from his best friend from kindergarten to his own older brother. The novel begins in media res with the school shooting and then we begin our story of how he got to this point. Picoult simply tells us where we are in the narrative with chapter titles like "First Day of Kindergarten" or "10 Days After".

As I began this book I was confused by the plethora of characters introduced immediately, but as I read, I realized they would all play important parts to the narrative of the novel. For example, Alex Courmier is the mother of one of the survivors, a girl named Josie, who witnessed the murder of her boyfriend, Matt. Alex a law student and later a defense attorney who got pregnant out of wedlock and didn’t want to keep her baby. Eventually she gave birth to Josie, and later became the sitting judge on the shooting trial. And Lacy, the midwife who loved watching babies born into her arms, commented on how much potential children had, but later when she raced to the school to make sure her only living son was ok, she was informed he’d been taken into custody for killing 10 students and wounding 19 others. And Patrick the investigating detective who lived alone and had no real life outside his job; the man who rushed into the school, arrested Peter Houghton, and carried the blacked out Josie out the front of the school. And Jordan, the defense attorney, who agreed to take the case while holding his own infant son because everyone should have a fair trial.

The book weaves these characters and several others through the narrative that led up to "That Day" and then forward in time through the trial and culminating in the one year anniversary, as two characters stand at the old site of the shooting where, in a newly renovated atrium, 10 white chairs sat for the 10 victims. They watched the world continue around them and discussed the hopes, dreams, and despair from a town trying to heal itself from years of hurt.