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Salem Falls

By Jodi Picoult

(34)

| Paperback | 9780743418713

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Book Description

Love can redeem a man...but secrets and lies can condemn him.

A handsome stranger comes to the sleepy New England town of Salem Falls in hopes of burying his past: once a teacher at a girls' prep school, Jack St. Bride was destroyed when a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusatiContinue

Critics

Salem Falls By Jodi Picoult

odi Picoult's new novel is as current as today's sordid headlines: rape, incest, Satanism, hazing, abuse of power and corrupt police departments. Part legal thriller and part psychology manual on teenage behavior, Picoult's entertaining book tackles ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Sun, 12 Sep 2010

3 Reviews

This being the sixth novel I have read by Jodi Picoult I have become very familiar with her chosen format for a novel, in which lawyers and moral dilemmas feature strongly. It may be that her novels are a little predictable but the format works and I enjoy reading them. After all that is what it’s a ... (continue)

This being the sixth novel I have read by Jodi Picoult I have become very familiar with her chosen format for a novel, in which lawyers and moral dilemmas feature strongly. It may be that her novels are a little predictable but the format works and I enjoy reading them. After all that is what it’s all about, entertainment.
Salem Falls is no exception, this time the themes are rape and witchcraft. The protagonist Jack St Bride has the unfortunate experience of not once but twice being accused of rape after becoming the object of teenage girls’ fantasies. The first time it happened there was no escape as the tension between truth and fiction drove events along. As a man having wrongly served a prison sentence he arrives in Salem Falls and tries to make a new life for himself with the help of Adie Peabody. He is noticed by a group of teenage girls in Salem who are experimenting in Wicca, a witchcraft religion. He has a very strong effect on Gillian Duncan a very troubled teenager who is their ring-leader and it is her he is wrongly accused of raping. This time though he has more support and one hopes that truth will win the day. Read the book to find out though, in fact the ending left me feeling very sorry for Gillian with Amos Duncan as her more than controlling father!

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Lindyloumac said on Oct 26, 2009 | Add your feedback

Gripping story about a man who had been falsely convicted of rape against a minor & subsequent small town prejudice.
As per Jodi Picoult's website:
"Jack St. Bride was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school - until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusat ... (continue)

Gripping story about a man who had been falsely convicted of rape against a minor & subsequent small town prejudice.
As per Jodi Picoult's website:
"Jack St. Bride was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school - until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his career and reputation. Now, after a devastatingly public ordeal that left him with an eight-month jail sentence and no job, Jack resolves to pick up the pieces of his life. He takes a job washing dishes at Addie Peabody's diner and slowly starts to form a relationship with her in the quiet New England village of Salem Falls. But just when Jack thinks he has outrun his past, a quartet of teenage girls with a secret turn his world upside down once again, triggering a modern-day witch hunt in a town haunted by its own history…"

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wgeddert said on Apr 13, 2009 | Add your feedback

Exceptionally brilliant. I think it's even better than My Sister's Keeper. It's more disturbing, too, because it is not about some interesting ethnics issues others have. It pokes right at every one of us, who could commit the same crime when we are too fearful, or plain evil.
And, as a Ch ... (continue)

Exceptionally brilliant. I think it's even better than My Sister's Keeper. It's more disturbing, too, because it is not about some interesting ethnics issues others have. It pokes right at every one of us, who could commit the same crime when we are too fearful, or plain evil.
And, as a Christina, how I now understand why false witness is in the 10 commandments, and why Jesus needs to come and save.

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Catitude said on Oct 16, 2008 | Add your feedback