Why I'm a Jodi Picoult fan...

I just finished reading my third Jodi Picoult novel in as many months. I am officially a fan: she is an incredible author. Each of her books deals with a tough, topical issue (battered women syndrome, stem-cell research and organ donor ethics, and school shootings respectively), yet none of her books are about those "issues". They are about the mosaic of human relationships surrounding each of those issues. It is amazing to me that she so deftly shows the complexity and frailty of the human condition - even the 'worst' of moral decisions somehow, somewhere, 'made sense' to the hurting, broken person in the situation. If I were a writer, hers are the books I would wish were mine.