Dombrowski has brought along Herb.īefore I have to stammer my answer, Marge calls our little group to order. It has made an appearance a few times at our group, and it was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen-until now, when Mrs. Stuart has-again-brought in the bronze death mask of his first wife’s face. Ethel is holding a television remote control. I see that Shayla is clutching a pair of knit pink booties so tightly her knuckles are white. At our last meeting, our facilitator-Marge-had suggested that we share a memory of whatever it was we had lost. Dombrowksi asks, and I realize why she’s toting her husband’s urn. After all, I’ve been coming for nearly three years now. “Wow,” I finally say, because although there are few rules to this group, the ones we have are steadfast: be a good listener, don’t judge, and don’t put boundaries on someone else’s grief. Am I supposed to say hello? Shake his handle? I’m sure there’s a protocol for meeting a spouse who’s been cremated, but I’m pretty much at a loss. I stand frozen, ducking my head so that my hair covers the left side of my face, like I usually do. She’s the one I told you about, the baker.” Dombrowski shyly nods toward the urn she is holding. I’ve brought a plate of baked goods-last week, Stuart told me that the reason he keeps coming to Helping Hands isn’t the grief counseling but my butterscotch pecan muffins-and just as I am It’s just past 3:00 p.m., and most of us are still filling our paper cups with bad coffee. Dombrowski brings her dead husband to our therapy group. On the second Thursday of the month, Mrs. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future. With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well.

Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t.Įverything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. An astonishing novel about redemption and forgiveness from the “amazingly talented writer” ( HuffPost) and #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult.

The storyteller jodi picoult summary