Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”-deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book.

Her best yet.įour men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions-as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer-and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. Masterfully telling a story more usually found in the tabloids, Picoult offers a perfectly pitched take on the great mysteries of the heart. Mariah, though distraught, finds herself attracted to Ian, who has his own secrets, but before true love and justice can be done, Faith nearly dies and Mariah goes to court, where she must defend herself, her past, and her daughter against an array of hostile witnesses and skeptics. Distressed by the turmoil and media frenzy, Colin, now remarried, blames Mariah and sues for custody. Television personality Ian Fletcher, who makes a living debunking religion, arrives to do a feature.

As the faithful, the ailing, and the curious gather outside Faith and Mariah’s house, stigmata appear on the girl’s wrists and various religious representatives question her credibility. Faith quotes scriptures she’s never been taught, claims she is speaking to God, miraculously resurrects her grandmother Millie (declared dead after a heart attack), and cures a child with AIDS. The last time Colin was unfaithful, Mariah became suicidally depressed and was hospitalized until shortly before Faith’s birth this time, after a speedy divorce, she tries to adjust to being on her own, but soon her daughter begins behaving oddly. When Mariah comes home early one afternoon with seven-year-old daughter Faith and surprises husband Colin in bed with another woman, her carefully constructed world threatens to fall apart. Picoult (The Pact, 1998, etc.) sets her tale in a small New Hampshire town during the last months of 1999 and intelligently addresses, without ever becoming strident or hysterical, such charged topics as mental illness and the existence of God. A sweetly affirmative portrait of mother-daughter love that explores big questions while also providing a riveting narrative of a custody battle.

Keeping faith