Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult

[mizfiesta]

I have just finished reading plain truth by Jodi Picoult and wanted to ask anyone who has read it what they thought of the ending. It emerged at the end of the book that Sarah (Katie's mother) had been aware of the pregnancy and it was indeed she who cut the cord when the baby was born. But had the baby died of natural causes or did Sarah murder it? Which then begs the question, what about all the 'miscarriages' Sarah had suffered in previous years? Were they really miscarriages or the work of a murderer?

[carolegif]

I I wondered about that. The inference is that the baby died of natural causes, but Sarah had suffered so many miscarriages that it indicates that she could have killed the baby so that Katie would not be ostracised by the Amish. The baby would have been brought up as part of the family, but there was a question mark over whether Katie would ever marry if she had a baby out of wedlock.
I did enjoy the book though.

carolegif

[pingping]

I finished the book thinking that Sarah had killed the baby in order to protect Katie. I didn�t read anything else into the miscarriages as there would have been no reason for Sarah to kill her own children.

[Octavius]

An online opinion�..

The one thing I didn't like about the ending was that Sarah was the one that had actually killed the child. I'm not quite sure what the scissors had to do with the death, since that was pretty much made out to be suffocation, but I do have to say that I was pretty convinced it was a natural death before that. I had imagined, before that was presented as a possibility, that perhaps the culprit was Aaron, since he was kept marginalized throughout the whole thing. I felt that Sarah should have valued life more, having lost so many children naturally, and with the death of Hannah and the exile of Jacob. I was waiting for someone to explain the bacterial infection from the unpasteurized milk as the reason for Sarah's miscarriages. Katie's sentence was neatly wrapped in a bow, I would have preferred to see what the jury would have said. That said, perhaps it was the just and fit thing for Katie in the end, although she was innocent of the murder.

Whether that helps or not I have no idea!