So I haven't really been in a readin mood lately. it took me almost a month to read Salem Falls because I got into it,but I couldn't really stay into it that long. In the beginning it starts out a little confusing; all the characters are introduced separately and it tells a bit about their pasts. Eventually they all tie together. Jack has just gotten out of jail for sexual assualt, Addie runs the Do-or-Diner like her life depends upon it since her daughter died, and everyone just falls into their story. By accident and on purpose. it seems like everything in the world is against Jack, just an ordinary guy who raped one of his students; or so everyone believes. But in Jodi Picoult's world nothing is as it seems until the very end, when you begin to find out what really happened.
Review/Description
Jack St. Bride comes to Salem Falls, after his release from prison. The former teacher and soccer coach wants to start a new life following a wrongful conviction for statutory rape. Unfortunately, Salem Falls turns out to be the wrong place to do it. He has no trouble landing a job at the local diner and winning the trust of the diner's eccentric owner, Addie, but the rest of the town is suspicious. Things get dangerous when manipulative 17-year-old Gillian Duncan, whose father owns half the town, gets interested in Jack and tries to seduce him with Wiccan love spells. Then Gillian is assaulted in the woods, and Jack is accused of the crime. As the courtroom battle unfolds, many secrets are revealed, and Picoult's characters are forced to confront the difference between who people are and who they say they are. The difference is considerable: despite the townspeople's aura of virtue, by the end of the book we're hard pressed to find any women who have never been raped or threatened, or any men who are really innocent of violence.
