Jodi Lynn Picoult was born on May 19th 1966 in Nesconset on Long Island, New York. She wrote her first story ‘The Lobster Which Misunderstood’ at the tender age of 5. Jodi went to Princeton University and graduated in 1987.
Her career started by editing text books and teaching English before gaining a Master’s Degree from Harvard. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003 and currently has some 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.
Jodi is married and has three children. They live with her husband Timothy in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Jodi’s first novel was Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992). It is about a woman who chooses to leave her emotionally abusive and distant husband behind in favour of driving across the country from San Diego, California to live with her brother in Massachusetts. Her teenage daughter chooses to come with her. Oliver, her husband, chooses to follow them in an attempt to save his family.
Nineteen Minutes was published on March 9, 2007 and was Jodi’s first book to debut at Number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. This book is about a school shooting and focuses on the events leading up to and following the incident. The story begins in the small town of Sterling, New Hampshire, tracking the lives of a number of characters on an “ordinary day.” The characters include Alex Cormier, a superior court judge; her daughter Josie, a junior in high school; Lacy, Lewis and Peter Houghton; Detective Patrick Ducharme; and several victims-to-be. Detective Patrick Ducharme also featured in Perfect Match (2002). Jodi has stated that she brought Patrick’s character back for a second novel because she has a crush on him.
Lone Wolf (2012) centres around a man returning to his childhood home after a terrible accident. Edward Warren has been living in Thailand for nearly 6 years when he receives a frantic phone call. His estranged family have been injured in a car accident and Warren’s father is comatose and his sister, Cara, is also injured. Cara still holds a grudge against Edward, since his departure led to their parents’ divorce. In the wreckage of the ruined marriage, she’s lived with her father, an animal conservationist, who became famous after living with a wolf pack in the Canadian wild. It is almost impossible for her to reconcile the broken man in the hospital bed with her vibrant, dynamic father.
Jodi Picoult has had various novels adapted to film and television including The Pact (2002) (Lifetime Original Movie), Plain Truth (2004) (Lifetime Original Movie), The Tenth Circle (2008) (Lifetime Original Movie), My Sister’s Keeper (2009) (Feature film) and Salem Falls (2011) (Lifetime Original Movie)