Sage Singer befriends an old man who's particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is everyone's favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…and then he confesses his darkest secret - he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard. Complicating the matter? Sage's grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.
What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who's committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was wronged? And most of all - if Sage even considers his request - is it murder, or justice?
What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who's committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was wronged? And most of all - if Sage even considers his request - is it murder, or justice?
This insomniac's opinion:
This is exactly the type of book that makes this Mama an insomniac! Holy intensity! I could not sleep until I knew if Sage was going to forgive Josef and find Josef's truth.
Now, I know that Jodi Picoult is not high-brow literature. But I can nearly always count on her for a compulsively readable novel that evokes strong emotions in me. I was disappointed by both Lone Wolf and Sing You Home(Picoult's most recent offerings), so I was thrilled that this novel was everything that I had hoped it would be. I adored the story of Minka, Sage's grandmother, which encompasses a great deal of the middle of the book and the way Minka's story was intertwined with the book within this book(you'll have to read it to understand what I mean). I do believe this is Ms. Picoult's finest work to date.
Worth staying up all night to read?
Absolutely. Keep tissues nearby.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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