It was a simple image of rebellion, but it was one that stayed with me. She was tired and frustrated and possibly a little bored. So, when it was time to pick up her husband’s dry cleaning, she drove for a while, then began tossing the freshly pressed clothes out the window.

I’ve been there. I’ve been tired. And frustrated. And convinced that my laundry was going to eat my basement before I could cut a path through it.

I’ve forgotten her name, but oh how I identified with her.

And then she went away. Oh, I thought about her from time to time, but I moved on to other heroines, other books.

Until My Sister’s Keeper came into my life and I began to read the remarkable story of a thirteen year old girl born to be a cord blood donor for a sister dying of leukemia. The problem, of course, is that leukemia comes back and she was asked to give more blood and more marrow and, eventually, a kidney.

It’s fiction, of course, but well written fiction.

So I looked the author up.

That’s when I remembered the image of the flying dry cleaning. That book was Harvesting the Heart. It was written by the same woman.

Her name is Jodi Picoult. She’s a wife and a mother. She’s probably been a little tired. And frustrated. And maybe even bored.

On her website, she’s just like you and me. So are her characters.

That’s what makes her books so good.

Tragedy could strike any one of us. We wouldn’t be prepared for it either.