‘I don’t want that nurse touching my baby.’ Those are the instructions from the newborn child’s parents. However, when the baby goes into cardiac arrest, Ruth, a nurse of twenty years’ experience, sees no option but to assist. But the baby dies. And Ruth is charged with negligent homicide.
Ruth is shattered and bewildered as she tries to come to terms with her situation. She finds different kinds of support from her sister, a fiery radical, and her teenage son, but it is to Kennedy McQuarrie, a white middle-class lawyer, to whom she entrusts her case, and her future.
As the two come to develop a truer understanding of each other’s lives, they begin to doubt the belief they each hold most dear. For the privileged to prosper, they come to realise, others have to suffer. Racism takes many forms and is reinforced by the structures of our society.
Small Great Things is the twenty-fifth novel by American author Jodi Picoult. The book focuses on race in America and revolves around the protagonist, a delivery nurse, named Ruth Jefferson.