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Second Glance
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Second Glance (2003) (edit title/settings)

by Jodi Picoult (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Do we love across time? Or in spite of it?
A developer has slated an ancient Abenaki Indian burial ground for a strip mall, and now strange happenings have the inhabitants of tiny Comtosook, Vermont, talking of supernatural forces at work. Ross Wakeman is a ghost hunter who's never... read more

Summary edit see section history

""Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?""
An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe,... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

""Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?""
An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it's a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there's nothing spiritual about the property.

Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He's driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He's been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fiancee's death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Jodi Picoult's enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion.

Hailed by critics as a "master" storyteller (Washington Post), Picoult once again "pushes herself, and consequently the reader, to think about the unthinkable" "(Denver Post). Second Glance, " her eeriest and most engrossing work yet, delves into a virtually unknown chapter of American history -- Vermont's eugenics project of the 1920s and 30s -- to provide a compelling study of the things that come back to haunt us -- literally and figuratively.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Shelby loved words, but she would be the first to tell you they had a habit of letting you down. Most of the time, the words that were not written were the one you needed most”
  • “...she had been broken. She hid it well, but Ross knew from personal experience that once you had put the pieces back together, even though you might look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before fall”
  • “True love is like ghost, which everybody talks about and few have seen”
    François, duc de la Rochefoucauld. Maxim 76
  • “Before you could grab onto something else, you had to let go”
    Ross Wakeman
  • “...as if love is a quantity he cannot measure scientifically, because it multiplies too quickly”
    Cecilia Beaumont Pike
  • “A princess in an ivory tower, that's what I am. But if the prince knew, at heart, that I am a toad, would he fight so hard to keep me?”
    Cecilia Beaumont Pike
  • “What good was eternity, when you outlived everyone you loved?”
    Az Thompson
  • “Don't try so hard to be me... when all I'm trying to be is someone else.”
    Ross Wakeman
  • “People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.”
    Az Thompson
  • “Spencer says that some women are meant to change the world, while others are meant to hold it together. And then there are those of us who simply don't want to be in it, because we know no matter how much we struggle we can't comfortably fit.”
  • “Trapped in the whirlpool of what might have been, you might not be able to drag yourself out—but you could be saved by someone else who reached in.”
  • “Heroes didn’t leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn’t wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else’s. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”
  • “People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don’t happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it’s just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.”
    Az Thompson
  • “Relationships succeed and fail because of the people in them . . . not some karmic plan.”
    Meredith Oliver
  • “God, no! To say that you’ve got one soul mate in the world, out of six billion people . . . well, mathematically that’s setting yourself up for failure. What are the odds?””
    Meredith Oliver
  • “And it’s always easier to be a victim than a failure.”
    Meredith Oliver
Show all 16 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Part One: 2001
Chapters 1-4

Part Two: 1932
5-7

Part Three: 2001
8-12

Acknowledgments

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Ghosts. (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Jodi Picoult (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Atria
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2003
ISBN: 0743454502
Page Count: 432

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3566.I372 S43 2003
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Adult themes

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
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