Harvesting the Heart: A Novel

Jodi Picoult

Apr 1995 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Small Great Things and Mad Honey, a novel exploring the story of a young woman overcome by the demands of having a family.

Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who abandoned her at five years old. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother's absence and shameful memories of her past force her to doubt whether she could ever be capable of bringing joy and meaning into the life of her child, gifts her own mother never gave.

Harvesting the Heart is written with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincing in its depiction of emotional pain, love, and vulnerability, and recalls the writing of Alice Hoffman and Kristin Hannah. Out of Paige's struggle to find wholeness, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled by richly drawn characters, and explores motherhood with a power and depth only she is capable of.

“A brilliant, moving examination of motherhood, brimming with detail and emotion.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Jodi Picoult explores the fragile ground of ambivalent motherhood in her lush second novel. This story belongs to… the lucky reader.” —The New York Times Book Review

Ratings and reviews

This book was pretty blah compared to her other books. Also, she was constantly forgetting what she'd written previously and contradicting herself. I found it very annoying and I hated the ending.

It does not appear that anyone else is disappointed in the end. Whatca crock of crap, they needed to end up together.

Love Jodi's books!! All touch on a different topic and give different views!!!

About the author

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including Small Great Things, Leaving Time, The Storyteller, Lone Wolf, Sing You Home, House Rules, Handle with Care, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, and My Sister’s Keeper. She is also the author, with daughter Samantha van Leer, of two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. Picoult lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.