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Second Glance: A Novel
by Jodi Picoult

Published: 2008-08-05
Paperback : 448 pages
7 members reading this now
11 clubs reading this now
9 members have read this book
Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 1 members
This breathtaking novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult asks: Do we love across time, or in spite of it?

“Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?”

An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day ...
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Introduction

This breathtaking novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult asks: Do we love across time, or in spite of it?

“Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?”

An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it’s a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there’s nothing spiritual about the property.

Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He’s driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He’s been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fiancée’s death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Jodi Picoult’s enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion.

Hailed by critics as a “master” storyteller (The Washington Post), Picoult once again “pushes herself, and consequently the reader, to think about the unthinkable” (Denver Post). Second Glance, her eeriest and most engrossing work yet, delves into a virtually unknown chapter of American history—Vermont’s eugenics project of the 1920s and 30s—to provide a compelling study of the things that come back to haunt us—literally and figuratively. Do we love across time, or in spite of it?

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  "A second glance"by Terri G. (see profile) 03/26/14

 
  "A typical Jodi Picoult novel; lots of characters in the beginning, a focus point, and finally everything comes together"by Alison R. (see profile) 04/01/09

Lots of discussions can be made with this novel. The amount of information gathered is phenomenal. The ghost, genetics, and love is all entwined in this novel. I don't think this is one of Ms. Picoult's... (read more)

 
  "A Mysterious Ghost Story . . ."by Jacqueline B. (see profile) 02/24/09

Many characters are thrown at you within the first 30 pages, but you become immediately interested to know how they're all connected. Even non-belivers in ghost stories will enjoy this read. It will bring... (read more)

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