Hollow Bones

Hollow Bones began with an anonymous PostSecret postcard depicting the Twin Towers and declaring that everyone who knew its sender before September 11 believed she was dead.

Jodi Picoult expanded that mystery through research into motherhood, postpartum psychosis, and the failures of medical systems to recognize women’s suffering.

The novel also examines how private grief persists after a public tragedy and how lies can be used for protection, self-preservation, or manipulation.

Picoult drew on correspondence with a woman imprisoned after killing her young daughter during postpartum psychosis.

The story also revisits Jesse Fitzgerald from My Sister’s Keeper, connecting Picoult’s new themes to an earlier character’s adult life.