Harvesting the Heart

November 1, 1993
Picoult ( Songs of the Humpback Whales ) brings her considerable talents to this contemporary story of a young woman in search of her identity. Abandoned by her mother when she was five years old, Paige O'Toole has been left with painful doubts about her self-worth. She leaves her Chicago home for Cambridge, Mass., at 18 to fulfill herself as an artist, but must work in a diner because she can't afford art school. When she marries Harvard medical student Nicholas Prescott, his parents disown him, disapproving of their Irish Catholic daughter-in-law. Again Paige is forced to sideline her creative needs and work as a waitress in order to support Nicholas until he is able to establish his career as a cardiac surgeon. Paige is soon overwhelmed by the demands of Nicholas's socially sophisticated world, and after the birth of their son, Max, she becomes emotionally and physically exhausted. Unable to communicate her terrors about herself to Nicholas, she leaves him to search for her mother, who may hold the answers to her life. Told in flashbacks, this is a realistic story of childhood and adolescence, the demands of motherhood, the hard paths of personal growth and the generosity of spirit required by love. Picoult's imagery is startling and brilliant; her characters move credibly through this affecting drama.

Bestselling author Jodi Picoult is known for picking up on hot-button issues that reverberate through the zeitgeist. This time it's the "mommy blues," and while it's easy to understand Page Prescott's need to get away from her mothering duties to find her own mother, who abandoned her as a child, it's a challenge to care much about her. The impossibly attractive heart surgeon, Nicholas, saves Page from herself, and, while he has a hard time forgiving her for leaving him with a three-month-old infant, the listener is still pulling for the couple to work out their problems. Narrator Cassandra Campbell handles the emotional roller coaster of Page's plight with aplomb, squeezing every ounce of sympathy possible from the runaway mom. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine