For Jodi Picoult, stories transcend geography, politics, time, gender, socioeconomics and far more.
Her work dwells in the gray areas, the places people might fear to venture alone but will do so willingly through the lens of a character who feels real. She wants her readers to think, for perspectives to shift, for conversations to spark — about suicide, abortion, transgender rights, criminal justice, gun violence.
Picoult, who lives in Hanover, has written three dozen books. A #1 New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of numerous accolades, she prides herself on thorough research, vivid storytelling and challenging moral dilemmas.
All of these elements will take the stage with Picoult to kick off the New Hampshire Book Festival on Friday, Oct. 2. As the adult keynote speaker, she will talk to an audience of readers at the Capitol Center for the Arts about her newest release, “Hollow Bones,” as well as many other aspects of her writing.
Rachel Wachman, of the Concord Monitor, chatted with Picoult ahead of her visit to the Capital City.
Rachel Wachman: Tell me a little bit about that feeling of coming home and being able to share your work with people right here in your own state.
Jodi Picoult: To be headlining this festival, it feels like synchronicity, like everything coming together at once. It was the perfect time of year because my book just came out, and I love meeting New Hampshire fans. There’s nothing I love more than repping the state and telling people why I love living here.
RW: This year marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I’m curious to learn more about the idea for “Hollow Bones” and what it means to you to share this story with the world.
JP: This book came about actually because of a text that an author friend sent me. It was from an Instagram handle called Post Secret … Basically, people send in their deepest, darkest secrets on a postcard, and they’re published anonymously. And this one said, “Everyone who knew me before 9/11 thinks that I’m dead.”
She just sent me this, like out of the blue, and I did what authors do: I called dibs on it. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I just kept thinking, what would make someone use a tragedy of that magnitude to disappear? And maybe more interestingly, what would make them come back?
And that is what “Hollow Bones” blossomed from. It is the story of Molly Fitzgerald. We hear about her when she’s two months old. Her mom goes to a doctor’s appointment and never comes home on 9/11. And when we meet her, it’s 25 years later. She is married to Jesse Fitzgerald from one of my earlier books, “My Sister’s Keeper.” He’s all grown up now. They’re expecting a baby. Life is great. She’s the head of Emergency Preparedness and Response for the whole state of Rhode Island, basically trying to keep people from feeling what she did in the aftermath of a catastrophe. And then she realizes when disaster hits close to home that that’s a lot easier said than done. That being prepared is not being protected. So, that’s the focus of the story. It’s about motherhood. It’s about the lies that we tell to protect the people we love, and it’s a lot about gender discrimination in healthcare.
RW: Your work tackles some really big, engaging and often controversial topics. It feels like you start conversations. Is that something that you’ve always set out to do? Did it happen over time?
JP: My parents came to visit last week, and the last conversation I had with them before they left me this morning was about how did I develop this sense of fairness and ethics? I don’t remember that being something that we talked about at the dinner table, for example. I think it was just kind of implicit in the way that my parents were living their lives and the things that were important to them. I think that’s something that I carry with me now, and hopefully have passed on to my kids as well.
I don’t think it’s my job as an author to tell you what to think. I do believe it’s my job to ask you why your opinions are what they are. Most of us form our opinions when we’re very young because our parents have them, our clergy have them, our friends have them, and then, we don’t ever rethink those opinions. And I think that my books allow you to hear the other side’s point of view, maybe for the first time. I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong, but I am going to ask you to listen, and maybe ask yourself, why do I believe what I believe? That is a conversation. That’s the first conversation that you have is with yourself. And then you’re equipped to have it with others.
RW: How do you choose which topics to delve into?
JP: The reason I choose a topic is because it’s something that I can’t stop thinking about at all. I just told you the whole Post Secret story. What would that have been like? What would I have done if I were in that situation, and that whole sense of asking myself to walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes is very much the foundation of most of my novels.
One of the superpowers of fiction, I think, is that a lot of people don’t want to discuss a difficult topic. Nobody goes and checks out of the library the FBI report on school shooters, right? It’s just not a fun read. But I think that when you write fiction, what you’re actually doing is creating characters and scenarios that are supposed to sweep your reader away. But if you’ve really done your job, by the end of the book, they’re still thinking about these big issues that have been filtered through the life of a character. If you can’t meet a person face-to-face who has experienced one of these issues or one of these controversies. The second best thing is to read about a character who has.
RW: Your characters are so vivid that they just jump right off the page. Part of what makes them compelling is how complicated they are. What does your study of people look like that allows you to render such complicated characters?
JP: I just sit there at airports, and I make up backstories for people. It’s not like I can tell you how I make up characters because, in many ways, they kind of arrive fully formed in my head. I just hear them. I hear their voices, and when I can hear them, I usually stop everything and then try to do all the research that I can because I need to know who they are, what they do, and be able to speak with authority for them. So, I never feel like I create characters. I sort of feel like, I guess, more like a medium, like I hear them talking to me.
RW: Often you begin with an acknowledgement of the professionals that you consulted or different elements of what your process looked like. And I know that you have had research experiences really around the globe. What percentage of your writing process is creative or imaginative versus researched, and how do you figure out which part to rely on at different points?
JP: Everyone asks me, ‘Oh, do you have a whole research team?’ I do not. I don’t even have an assistant. What you see is what you get. I do everything from mailings to answering fan mail. So, I don’t have a research assistant, and I wouldn’t want one because that’s the best part of the job.
When I know what my story is going to be, and I figure out who my characters are — in the case of Molly, for example, in “Hollow Bones,” I knew I was going to have to learn about emergency preparedness and response. So, I wound up talking to her real-life counterpart in Rhode Island. I did probably 50 hours of interviews with her by Zoom, and then went down to attend one of the surprise training sessions that she runs, which was absolutely insane to be there in the thick of it to see what that feels like was amazing. For Jesse’s character, I wound up networking until I got to a deputy sheriff who is in charge of polygraphy in the state of New Hampshire for the State Police. I went in. He taught me how to run the machine, and then he hooked me up to the machine.
The big question I usually get is, ‘How do you know when to stop research?’ It’s sometimes hard because some of the research is really fun and you just want to keep doing it forever. When I’m sitting in front of someone like the emergency preparedness director, she might say something, and in the back of my mind, I’m going to go, “I’m going to use that in this part of the book.” When I have enough of those, it’s very weird. It feels like a little tornado in my head, and it touches down in a first line. And when I have the first line of the book, that’s when I know I can write.
RW: It sounds like you have really well-developed systems that you’ve honed throughout your career. I’m curious what has surprised you the most about your trajectory and the stories that you’ve told.
JP: That I’m here talking to you! Seriously, the odds of becoming a published writer are so slim, and the odds of becoming a published writer with people who buy books that are not my mother and her friends are huge, right? I actually do remember being young and thinking, okay, at this point my mom just doesn’t have that many friends, you know, so someone’s got to be reading my books out there. To be a best-selling author, to have the name recognition that I have to have, to have had the level of success that I’ve had with 30 books — just even to have 30 books that are not just published but are all still in print — very few writers have that.
That is mind-boggling to me. I don’t consider that actually a function of me or my talent or anything like that. I actually consider that a function of my fans, for whom I am extremely grateful, because I do not write the same book over and over. I have fans that are like so willing to go anywhere I want to take them. I cannot think of another writer who has a fan base with that level of trust. I’m just so fortunate to have that.
RW: If there was one final burning question that I could ask you, it’s what work do you see stories doing in the world in which we live, and what does storytelling mean to you?
JP: We are living in a time when facts are fictional, when lies are presented as truths. And when that happens, sometimes the only real way to get to the truth is through fiction, ironically.
So I think that we are living in a world right now where fiction is so important because it’s giving people the resources and the knowledge that nonfiction should and may not be at this moment because of people in power who are manipulating the truth. For me, stories start conversations. Stories allow you to hear another point of view and to get yourself out of your echo chamber. Stories bridge differences, and with any luck, stories open minds and hearts a little bit.
