Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Contemporary Realistic Fiction
“If you chose to stop a loved one’s suffering—either before it began or during the process—was that murder, or mercy?”
“I would never have wished for an able-bodied child, because that child would have been someone who wasn’t you.”
“You were Willow, pure and simple. There was nobody else like you. I knew it the moment I first held you, wrapped in foam so that you wouldn’t get hurt in my arms: your soul was stronger than your body, and in spite of what the doctors told me over and over, I always believed that was the reason for the breaks. What ordinary skeleton could contain a heart as big as the whole world?”
Six year old Willow was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which is a brittle bones disease. She will have several hundred broken bones in her, most likely, short life, among an array of other disabilities that will cause pain and constant struggle. Her parents, Charlotte and Sean love her just the way she is, she is perfect. After a nightmarish trip to Disney World, they visit a lawyer who advises them they have a case for a lawsuit, just not the kind they were thinking, a wrongful birth suit.
