My Sister's Keeper (2004) (edit title/settings)

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Characters edit see section history

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• Anna Fitzgerald: Anna Fitzgerald is the youngest child of Sara and Brian Fitzgerald, and the youngest sister of Kate and Jesse. Anna was conceived to be a donor for her sister, Kate, who has leukemia. Anna never really had a say in medical matters, and decides to sue for the right to her own body.
• Kate Fitzgerald: Kate is the middle child of Sara and Brian Fitzgerald. Anna and Jesse are her siblings. When Kate was only two years old, she was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia, a very rare kind. She has spent her life in and out of treatments, always fighting to stay in remission.
• Sara Fitzgerald: Sara is the mother of Jesse, Kate, and Anna. Sara is married to Brian. Sara was a lawyer before she had any childeren and then she dedicated her life to her childeren. Sara was so determined to not let Kate die from cancer, that she suggested that they should have another child, who would be genetically engineered to be a perfect match for Kate.
• Brian Fitzgerald: Brian is the father of Jesse, Kate, and Anna, as well as the chief of the fire station. He's one of the few people who try to see things from her side.
• Campbell Alexander: Campbell is Anna's attorney. He is also going through a lot trying to hide his epilepsy form everyone and dealing with seeing his high school sweet heart Julia. He's got black hair and he’s around six feet tall with a right-angle jaw and eyes that look frozen over.
• Julia Romano: Julia is the guardian ad litem in Anna's case.
• Jesse Fitzgerald: Jesse is the oldest out of the three siblings.
• Dr. Chance: Dr Chance is very close to the Fitzgeralds because he is Kate's oncologist and has been with with them since the beginning. In fact he is the one that recommended genetically engineering Anna.
• Judge De Salvo: Judge De Salvo is the Judge in Anna's case, whose daughter just recently died in a car accident.
• Taylor Ambrose: Taylor Ambrose is a boy Kate met at the hospital when she was younger. He has cancer as well.
• Paulie: Paulie is one of Brian's friends and fellow firefighters.
• Izzy Romano: Izzy is Julia's twin sister. She is a lesbian jewelry designer.
• Caesar: Caesar is another of Brian's friends and fellow firefighters. He has a reputation of being a bit of a Casanova.
• Suzanne: Suzanne is Sara's older sister. She is wealthy, and has often offered to help pay for Kate's medical expenses.
• Steph: Steph is one of the many nurses who has taken care of Kate, and grown to know and love the Fitzgerald family.
• Judge: Campbell's dog.

Quotes edit see section history

• “You take someone's breath away. You rob them of the ability to utter a single word. You steal a heart.”

  Julia

• “You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”

  Julia Romano

• “Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.”

  Anna Fitzgerald

• “That tiny loss of rhythm, that hollow calm, that utter loss.”

  Sara Fitzgerald

• “You don't have to be awake to cry.”

  Sara Fitzgerald

• “... And every time I see two girls sinking into pliés at the barre, I think of us.”

  Kate Fitzgerald

• “She turned to me with all the world in her eyes and a smile that crumbled like a fault line. 'She said thanks.'”

  Anna Fitzgerald

• “Afterward, he places the chest X-ray on the light panel outside the door. Kate's ribs seem as thin as matchsticks, and there is a large gray blot just off center. "It's a tumor. The cancer's metastasized. The doctor puts his hand on my shoulder. "Mrs. Fitzgerald," he says, "that's Kate's heart."”

  Sara Fitzgerald.

• “Not too long ago, when Kate was in the hospital to get her kidneys checked out, a new nurse handed her a cup and asked for a urine sample. "It better be ready when I come back for it," she said. Kate-- who isn't a fan of snotty demands --decided the nurse needed to be taken down a peg. She send me out on a mission to the vending machines, to get the very juice that the judge is drinking now. (Apple Juice) She poured this into the specimen cup, and when the nurse came back, held it up to the light. "Huh," Kate said. "Looks a little cloudy. Better filter it through again." And then she lifted it to her lips and drank it down. The nurse turned pale and left the room. Kate and I were laughing so hard that our sides hurt.”

• “Why? I'm dying. You're dying." When I frowned, she said. "Well, you are." Then she grinned. "I just happen to be more gifted at it then you are.”

  Kate Fitzgerald

• “Do you happen to know where she is?" saked Julia. "Am I my sister's keeper?”

  Jesse Fitzgerald

• “Fire and hope are connected, just so you know.”

  The perspective of Brain Fitzgerald

• “There is a pregnant bubble of silence on the other end of the phone.”

  The perspective of Sara Fitzgerald

• “Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.”

• “I realize then that we never have children, we receive them.”

• “Firefighting is a world of Murphy's Law; it is when you can least afford a crisis that one crops up.”

  Brian

• “There are always sides. There is always a winner, and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give.”

• “"I imagined the raindrops melting away my skin. I waited for the one stroke of lightning that would arrow through my heart, and make me feel one hundred percent alive for the first time in my whole sorry existence."”

• “"Well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least."”

• “A real friend isn’t capable of feeling sorry for you.”

• “My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -- It gives a lovely light!”

  Edna St. Vincent Millay, "First Fig," A Few Figs from Thistles

• “Darkness, you know, is relative.”

  Jesse Fitzgerald

• “So Campbell walks up to the witness stand and leans so close that only I can hear him. "When I was a kid, I had a friend named Joseph Balz," he whispers. "Imagine if Dr. Neaux had married him."”

  Campbell

• “There was time when, like Kate, I'd wanted to be a ballerina. But since then I've gone through a thousand different stages: I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be a paleontologist. I wanted to be a backup singer for Aretha Franklin, a member of the cabinet, a Yellowstone National Park ranger. Now, based on the day, I want to be a micro-surgeon, a poet, a ghost hunter. Only one thing's constant. "Ten years from now," I say, "I'd like to be Kate's sister."”

  Anna Fitzgerald

• “here are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope, you realize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it. They created so much gravitational pull there's no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example, and relize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion -that the first one shines so bright, by the time you notice the second one, it's really too late.”

  Brian Fitzgerald

• “There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rule book that says it is alright to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after forty-two days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass -if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it is okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.”

  Kate Fitzgerald

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• You don’t love someone because they’re perfect,” she says. “You love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.”

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• That maybe who we are isn’t so much about what we do, but rather what we’re capable of when we least expect it.

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• I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it’s not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all.

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• The human capacity for burden is like bamboo — far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.

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• A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.

  Highlighted by 105 Kindle customers

• Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

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• A jewel’s just a rock put under enormous heat and pressure. Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.

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• Doubt thou that the stars are fire; Doubt thou that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt that I love. — WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

  Highlighted by 80 Kindle customers

• Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we’ve accomplished.

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• Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

  Highlighted by 53 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Providence Hospital
• Bergen
• Rhode Island

Organizations edit see section history

• The Fitzgerald Family: A family struggling to hold together. Sara and Brian will sacrifice anything to help Kate overcome leukemia. Kate is the martyr, Jesse is the delinquent and Anna is the glue that holds the family together

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Leukemia: any of several cancers of the bone marrow that prevent the normal manufacture of healthy blood cells.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by The Time Traveler's Wife, and followed by Outlander.

Preceded by Eat, Pray, Love, and followed by The Great Gatsby.

Preceded by Life of Pi, and followed by Animal Farm.

Preceded by Animal Farm, and followed by The Giver.

Preceded by Life of Pi, and followed by Eat, Pray, Love.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jodi Picoult (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Various (Narrator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Sainsbury's Popular Fiction Award (Finalist)
• Alex Awards (2005)
• Heartland Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature (2006)
• Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award (2007: Young Adult)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3566.I372 M9 2004
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Deals with mature themes like drug addiction and death

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Women's Fiction › Sisters
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Medical

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Jodi Picoult: A conversation with Jodi Picoult about My Sisters Keeper
• Wikipedia page for "My Sister's Keeper"

Movie Connections edit see section history

• My Sister's Keeper (2009) (IMDb): Anna Fitzgerald looks to earn medical emancipation from her parents who until now have relied on their youngest child to help their leukemia-stricken daughter Kate remain alive.

More Books Like This edit see section history