Jodi Picoult - Plain Truth

Reviewed by showhost on 14th May
Story begins with an 18yr old Amish girl, Katie, who secretly gives birth to a baby in the barn on the farm where whe lives. But the girl is not married & the baby is found dead, wrapped in a shirt by the farm hands. Also, Katie, when questioned by the police a few hours later denies being pregnant but is rushed to hospital with hemorrhaging from her womb. The tests from the hospital prove that Katie was/had been pregnant. Other tests link her to the dead premature baby. Katie is charged with murder.
She wasn't going to have a defence represent her in court as it's against the Amish way but an 'outcast' auntie asks the help of Ellie (a big city attorney) who had come to stay with her aunt in Paradise, Pennsylvania, to put her life together.
Against her better judgement, she takes the case on although she believes her client (who is actually her cousin) killed/suffocated the newborn baby.
The only bail bargain resulted in Ellie having to babysit her client but her client wasn't allowed to leave her home/farm.
Ellie lives for months on an Amish farm with none of the comforts of home (electric, phone etc) plus having to share a room with her client who still claims she did not have a baby.
The story gradually unravels, and the drama in a& out of the court. Katies banned outcast brother & her Amish boyfriend (whom she never slept with) take the stand to defend her.
The story keeps you guessing as to what really happened. I kept trying to pre-empt what I thought she was going to say, but sad to say, I didn't get it right. It portrays the life of the Amish really well. You know that Jodi Picoult will always research her book subjects meticulously. So, another well researched, suspenseful novel.
When I was reading this book my mind kept flicking back to the film 'Witness' with Harrison Ford. He was a detective who went to live on an Amish Farm to protect a female murder witness. He has to live the Amish way & in the film we see them erecting a barn as described in the book. He arrived in a car which developed a fault so he had to hide it in a barn but when he finally gets his car going & the radio begins to play ....'don't know much about history'....he dances with his protected female witness.....
I watched that film twice (which for me is very rare) as I really enjoyed that barn scene so much.