Excerpt from Jodi Picoult’s Leaving Time

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, read the rules at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

One of my readers told me that my writing reminds her of Jodi Picoult. And I’m embarrassed to say I have read very little of Jodi Picoult. So when Leaving Time showed up on my Overdrive feed, I snatched it up. This is her most recent work, with rave reviews. So far, I am greatly enjoying this gentle mystery/suspense.

“Or maybe the reason I have this random memory is as a trade-off my brain made—because I can’t remember what I desperately wish I could: details of the night my mother disappeared.”

Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

Alice Metcalf was a devoted mother, loving wife and accomplished scientist who studied grief among elephants. Yet it’s been a decade since she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind her small daughter, husband, and the animals to which she devoted her life. All signs point to abandonment. . .or worse. Still Jenna–now 13 years old and truly orphaned by a father maddened by grief–steadfastly refuses to believe in her mother’s desertion. So she decides to approach the 2 people who might still be able to help her find Alice: a disgraced psychic named Serenity Jones, and Virgil Stanhope, the cynical detective who first investigated her mother’s disappearance and the strange, possibly linked death of 1 of her mother’s co-workers. Together these 3 lonely souls will discover truths destined to forever change their lives. Deeply moving and suspenseful, Jodi Picoult’s first novel with Random House Canada is a radiant exploration of the enduring love between mothers and daughters.