As an author of the kind of bestsellers that keep readers up way past their bedtimes and stay with them long after they turn the last page, Jodi Picoult is used to being swarmed by fans.
But this swarm was special.
The crowd who gathered around Picoult as she accepted the Sarah Josepha Hale Award in Newport last month represented an achievement more elusive than popularity, more gratifying, in some ways, than critical acclaim.
“There’s something different when you get an award from home,” Picoult, 53, said in a phone interview from her Hanover home this week. “You feel like a favorite daughter.”
The Sarah Josepha Hale Award recognizes New England writers who have made valuable contributions to the field of literature and letters. Created in 1956 by the Richards Free Library trustees, the award has honored some of the most distinguished writers of the era, including Robert Frost, Donald Hall, Anita Shreve and Richard Russo. It’s named for the Newport author whose achievements include penning Mary Had a Little Lamb and promoting Thanksgiving as a national holiday, as well as writing some of the first novels published by American women.
If the award reaffirms the literary value of Picoult’s work, which she has claimed tends to get unfairly pigeonholed as “chick lit,” a different distinction seems to excite her more.
“This award was really cool because I’ve watched everyone else who’s won as kind of this roll call of highly literary New England writers,” said Picoult, the author of 25 novels, the last 10 of which became instant bestsellers. “It was almost as if someone said, ‘OK, you’re a real New Englander now.’ ” Picoult grew up in New York and graduated from Princeton University.
The award ceremony, preceded by a potluck dinner and attended by groups from local high schools, was special to Picoult for another reason, too. Moving here 25 years ago as a newly published author, Picoult built a grassroots following for herself in small New England towns, book club by book club, library by library.
“My earliest readers were from around here. They read my books when no one else was reading them,” said Picoult, who just finished the draft for her 26th novel, The Book of Two Ways, due out in October 2020. “I would argue that I was a New England writer before I was a national one.”
New England places and sensibilities figure prominently in Picoult’s books. “In a way, New England becomes an extra character in my books,” said Picoult. “In a country that’s almost eradicated its history in an effort to stay up to date, it really is the only place in the country where you can still see a town green. … It’s a real privilege to be up here and to be the keeper of that kind of history.”
In choosing Picoult for the Hale Award, judges praised her meticulous research and her skill in addressing controversial issues by weaving together multiple perspectives.
“Her ability to get readers to understand and respect different points of view is exactly what the country so desperately needs now,” one judge wrote in the award announcement.
Playing that kind of role for her readers is part of what energizes Picoult after a quarter century of writing. Her books, which tackle topics as inflammatory as racism, suicide, end-of-life ethics and abortion, have earned her death threats and hate mail, but they also have influenced readers in profound ways. One reader wrote her last week to tell her that her latest book, Spark of Light, had completely changed her views on abortion.
“We are a very fractured country right now. It’s very hard for us to get out of our echo chambers,” Picoult said. “Sometimes fiction … is a little easier when it comes to inviting you as a reader to hear someone else’s point of view. … In a way, we’re asking people to think about hard issues through the back door.”
Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com or 603-727-3268.