Small Great Things

Ruth Jefferson has spent more than twenty years as a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital. When she starts a routine checkup on a newborn, the baby's parents object to her touching their son. They are white supremacists, and Ruth is Black. The hospital agrees to their demand and moves her to another patient. The next day, Ruth is alone in the nursery when the baby goes into cardiac distress, and she has to decide whether to follow the instructions she was given or step in.

She hesitates before starting CPR, and that pause leads to a serious criminal charge. Her case goes to Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, who makes a surprising recommendation: race should stay out of the courtroom. Ruth is torn by this. She wants to protect her family, especially her teenage son, from the glare as the case becomes a media sensation, but she is also being asked to stay quiet about the very thing that set events in motion.

As the trial approaches, the two women have to learn to trust each other. Along the way, each is forced to question what she has always believed about other people and about herself. Jodi Picoult uses the courtroom drama to examine racism, privilege, prejudice, justice and compassion, and she leaves the hard questions open instead of tying them up neatly.