Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader.

Today our guest is Jodi Picault (pee-ko, pico).

Wellington Square Bookshop is thrilled to host Jodi Picoult at the Hilton Garden Inn, Exton on Tuesday, October 25th at 2:00pm. Jodi will be on-hand to read from her latest novel, Small Great Things. Following the reading she will discuss the book and answer readers' questions.

Tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite.com by entering Wellington Square Bookshop in the "browse events" tab. The cost of the ticket is $33.99 and includes a signed copy of the book, $5 gift certificate, coffee & dessert and a donation made to VIDA: Women in Literary Arts in Jodi's honor. Jodi is an advisory board member of VIDA, whose goal is to increase critical attention to contemporary women’s writing and to foster transparency around gender and racial equality issues in contemporary literary culture.

Following the event, attendees are invited back to the Bookshop. (hopefully, should time allow, Jodi too) Shuttles will run the short distance between the hotel and bookshop and directions will be on hand, for those wishing to drive themselves.

Seating is rapidly approaching capacity. If we had a bigger a venue we could have filled that too. Those wishing to attend are encouraged to purchase tickets soon, as the event will sell out well in advance.

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Back to the work at hand.

Jodi is the bestselling author of twenty-three I guess now 24 novels, everything from her debut Songs of the Humpback Whale, to Salem Falls, My Sister’s Keeper, Leaving Time and now her latest work, Small Great Things, just published last week by Ballantine.

Small Great Things is the story of Ruth, an African American labor and delivery Nurse, her son Edison, her friends, her attorney Kennedy, and on the other side, Turk and his wife Brit and I guess, in a way most importantly, their son Davis about whom the entire novel pivots.

But the novel also pivots around a situation in modern American, the concept of racial parity, of racial equality or better still as Jodi says in her book, racial equity.

Are we as white American men and women able to be truly colorblind? Can we ever experience what it are like to be labeled second fiddles, second best and second class?

Kennedy puts it well when she asks the jury how would you like it if you were born on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday--were treated quite well in life, tickets, best seats, early dismissal, but if you were born on a Friday or Saturday then you rode in the back of the bus, got the second class jobs and were denied the best education.

In summary the novel deals gracefully with a topic, which has reared, its ugly heard in this election cycle and all around our country from police shootings to football games and the national anthem.

The novel couldn’t have arrived at a more propitious time.