Keep "My Sister's Keeper"

Has one book ever made you rush out literally the next day to buy another work by the author? Have you ever been so moved by one writer's work to wish to devour every word they've written? That is how I felt when I completed "My Sister's Keeper," by Jodi Picoult.

The last time I was so moved by a book that I didn't stop crying for at least a half hour after completing it was a pre-teen reading Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia."

Picoult created a story that touched reader's hearts and troubled their minds. You couldn't help reading the book and wondering, "Would I do that?" "What would I do."

Anna, the 13-year-old child who brings a lawsuit against her family for medical independence, is at once believable and unimaginable. Her maturity supersedes her years, but then again, she never had a childhood. The reader sympathizes with Anna as she struggles to identify herself away from her leukemia-plagued sister Kate, who has needed everything from her sister from cord blood to now her kidney to survive. The story is riveting as you see it from the eyes of the mother, Sara, father, Brian, and brother Jesse. Peripheral characters Julia, a court-appointed advisor, and Campbell, Anna's lawyer, round out the eyes, ears and hearts of the story and provide dramatic relief to what could be an overwhelmingly suffocating story.

The story is one that chills you to the core as you consider the medical mysteries we still face and the answers we have at our fingertips, such as genetic modification of embryos to create "perfect matches" or more. You can't read "My Sister's Keeper" without being forced to think which I believe is one of the most telling attributes of a good book. Does it make you want to discuss it? Are there questions that aren't left unanswered by the book, but by yourself?

Thank you, Jodi Picoult for making me think and making me ask questions I haven't yet found the answers for.