And as she unravels a tangled murder case, Ellie also looks deep within - to confront her own fears and desires when a man from her past comes back into her life. Delving deep inside the world of those who live 'plain', Ellie must find a way to reach Katie on her terms. When Ellie Hathaway, a disillusioned big-city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania, to defend Katie, two cultures collide - and for the first time in her high-profile career, Ellie faces a system of justice very different from her own. But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: circumstantial evidence suggests that eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman believed to be the newborn's mother, took the child's life. From the best-selling author of My Sisters Keeper comes the riveting story of a murder that shatters the picturesque calm of Amish country - and tests the. The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster Country to its core. Perhaps the story's quietude is appropriate, given its magnificently painted backdrop and distinctive characters, but one can't help wishing that the spark igniting the book's opening pages had built into a full-fledged blaze.A shocking murder shatters the picturesque calm of Pennsylvania's Amish country - and tests the heart and soul of the lawyer who steps in to defend the young woman at the centre of the storm. Very little action occurs beyond the initial setup, though the questions remain: Who was the father of Katie's child? And did she smother the newborn? Told from both third-person omniscient and first-person (Ellie's) vantages, the story rolls leisurely through the trial preparations, the results of which are repeated, tediously, in the courtroom. Living with the Amish necessitates some adjustments for both parties, but Katie and Ellie become fast friends in spite of their differences. However, to meet bail stipulations, she volunteers as Katie's guardian (since Kate's strict parents reject her) and moves in with the Fishers. Ellie, who has retreated to Leda's farm in Paradise to reconsider her life-she successfully defends guilty clients-embarks on the case reluctantly: at 39, she wants nothing more than to have a child. Katie Fisher, 18, denies not only having committed the murder but even having borne the baby, whose body is found in the Fishers' calving pen, and she sticks to her story, even when she is quizzed by Ellie Hathaway, the high-powered Philadelphia attorney who undertakes Katie's defense as a favor to Leda, an aunt she and the young woman share. Though it begins as the quietly electrifying story of an unmarried Amish teenager who gives birth to a baby she is accused of then smothering, Picoult's latest (after Keeping Faith) settles into an ordinary trial epic, albeit one centered intriguingly on an Amish dairy farm near Lancaster, Pa.
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