“Plain Truth”
by Jodi Picoult
Published: August 2007
ISBN: 1416547819

(Updated: March 17, 2008.)

From the Publisher…

From the bestselling author of My Sister’s Keeper comes the riveting story of a murder that shatters the picturesque calm of Amish country — and tests the heart and soul of the lawyer defending the woman at the center of the storm.

The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster County to its core. But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: circumstantial evidence suggests that eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman believed to be the newborn’s mother, took the child’s life. When Ellie Hathaway, a disillusioned big-city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania, to defend Katie, two cultures collide — and for the first time in her high-profile career, Ellie faces a system of justice very different from her own. Delving deep inside the world of those who live “plain,” Ellie must find a way to reach Katie on her terms. And as she unravels a tangled murder case, Ellie also looks deep within — to confront her own fears and desires when a man from her past reenters her life.

I waited a while before reviewing this book and my own plain truth is that I can’t remember much about it. On reading the publisher’s description, the story line comes back to me but not much else does. I do recall thinking that I preferred Beverly Lewis’ The Preacher’s Daughter for the sense of being “in” an Amish community and, although I think the pretext of this book is an interesting one, I wasn’t very engaged in its development.

My rating for this novel is two out of five.