Community Library Notes
“A Spark of Light” by Jody Picoult is the story of the “Center” and Wren McElroy. Wren sits at the Center and a man points a gun at her. The Center is the last standing abortion clinic in Mississippi. The man with the gun is George, and to him, this was like a holy crusade.
Hugh McElroy is the hostage negotiator George has been talking to for hours. McElroy says George’s daughter would know he’d wanted to protect her. Men with rifles wait for him to exit the center.
Author Picoult describes different types of hostage takers. McElroy knows it’s a matter of luck. Is his luck about to run out? Around the building are ambulances, SWAT teams, reporters, and people with placards. He must not forget this is a job. Don’t take it too personally. But one of the hostages is his kid.
Suddenly, the front door opens and two women step outside. Wren had moved the couch away from the door as George had instructed her. Olive’s body was on the floor. Janise is being treated by an EMT outside. She’s in shock. The police drive her to the station to make a statement. She knows how different religions view personhood. Allen had sent her to the Center as a spy. He’s the leader of a local Right to Life group.
We meet Izzy who is pregnant and from a poor family. She lives with Parker whom she met when he had a broken leg and she was his nurse. He had gone to Yale University, went to a private school, and has a trust fund. Izzy and he are from different classes.
Bex is Hugh’s sister, Wren’s aunt. She loves them and needs no one else. She’s an artist. She knows Hugh has a plan to get them to safety. He always does. He offers himself as a hostage. Quandt, the SWAT leader wants to go in with his team. Hugh says no.
Louie Ward is an OBGYN who flies to different clinics in the country. He was raised by the women in the Bayou neighborhood. Now he is in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound. Joy brings home an anti-abortion activist after she has an abortion. Strange bedfellows. They exchange names, have tea. Joy wonders how she and Janine can return to normal tomorrow. Joy shows Janine the ultra- sound of her unborn child, a boy. Joy had made her choice, but she can also grieve.
In a hospital three hours away, Beth sees her court-appointed lawyer, Mandy DuVille. Beth hadn’t wanted to be a mother at seventeen. Mandy holds her close as she cries. Hugh has raised Wren by himself as his wife now lives in France with a younger man. Quandt says to Hugh as he goes inside the clinic, “Don’t be a hero.” “I’m not,” he says, “I’m a father.” Inside, George feels he and
Hugh are not too different; Hugh thought it possible to reason with a madman. Were both men right?
Author Picoult describes Janine’s life. She has a younger brother with Downs Syndrome who makes her laugh. She becomes president of a Right to Life club at college. She knows both men and women bear responsibility for sex and parenthood. Izzy sits beside Olive’s body and pressures Olive’s chest. Louie has read everything Martin Luther King has written, and believes them deeply. He received scholarships to college and medical school.
His mom had had an abortion to save the child she already had, Louie. He became an abortion provider although he was a Catholic. He went to the clinic every day. He wanted the women to know they were not alone. Izzy tended to Louie’s wound. He knew she was pregnant and assured her she’d get out and have a bouncing baby.
Joy had met a handsome man in a bar and she took him home because he looked so sad. He was a judge and treated her nicely. Then he left her. Now she is pregnant. Wren has wounded the shooter with a scalpel and he wraps a tourniquet around the wound. Back with Beth at the hospital, Mandy is with her and so is prosecutor Willie Cork. She is charged with murder of her unborn fetus. Mississippi has laws to protect the vulnerable, says attorney Cork. Mandy protests and protects Beth from Cork. The cases Cork discusses have all been thrown out of court.
At the clinic the television announces that the shooter had killed innocent civilians in Bosnia, but George mutters that wasn’t the truth. He fears his daughter will hear this. She is the “light of his life.” Izzy tapes Wren’s hands as George instructs her and secretly inserts a scalpel inside the tape. Hugh learns that Wren came to the clinic for birth control, not for an abortion.
Picoult takes the reader back through the hours and days leading up to the present standoff between Hugh and George. She takes events from life and weaves them with fiction into a dramatic novel. When an egg and a sperm come together, they create a “spark of light.” Thus the title. Picoult resolves these lives in unexpected ways: What happens to Bex? Does Wren escape the shooter? What happens to George and does Hugh come out a hero? Who is George’s daughter? Find out on the fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library when it re- opens.