Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult is a novel that tells a story about a young adult woman who marries an aspiring doctor.

Paige O'Toole is only 18 years old when she leaves her home town in Chicago for Boston. She has an amazing talent as an artist and gets a job at a small local diner, where she meets Nicholas Prescott, a handsome young doctor who is a regular at the diner. It was practically love at first sight and they start a short romance, which leads quickly to marriage, without Nicholas's parents consent.

The book starts revealing Paige's dark past in flashbacks and memories. Secrets she never told Nicholas in their eight years of marriage tear her and their relationship apart.

Her mother left her and her father when she was only five. Paige's fear of repeating her mother's history comes to reality when she gets pregnant unexpectedly.

With Nicholas always at the hospital, working 24 and 36 hour shifts at a time and only returning home to eat and sleep, a distance forms. After the baby is born, Paige is stuck at home with a newborn she has no idea what to do with.

She takes off one day without the baby, without knowing why. She travels as far as Chicago and visits her father, then hires a private investigator to find her mother.

When she finally returns home, a changed person, Nicholas has adjusted to life without her. She has to show Nicholas she means to stay.

Picoult ends her novels with unexpected endings. This one ends with a different description of what is expected.

This book kept me guessing to the very end. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who would enjoy following the story of a marriage and a maternal struggle of a woman who runs to escape her problems.

It is extremely enjoyable and wraps the reader into the flashback story revealing bits and pieces of both the main characters' pasts. The novel unravels a truth and reality of many marriages today and the damages that they suffer throughout time.

Picoult has written 12 novels. This novel was her second. Published by Viking in 1995, the paperback version came out in 1995 by Penguin.