Hollow bones

 

Jodi Picoult is one of our favorite authors.

  

As of 2026, Picoult has published 30 novels, several short stories, and has also written several issues of Wonder Woman.

Approximately 40 million copies of her books are in print worldwide and have been translated into 34 languages. In 2003, she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction.

Picoult writes fiction which has been characterized as family saga, frequently centering storylines with moral dilemmas or procedural dramas which pit family members against one another. Over her writing career, Picoult has covered a wide range of controversial issues, including abortion, the Holocaust, assisted suicide, race relations, eugenics, LGBT rights, fertility issues, religion, the death penalty, and school shootings. Picoult has been described by Janet Maslin as "a solid, lively storyteller, even if she occasionally bogs down in lyrical turns of phrase.

Because many of her topics are controversial, she is one of the most widely banned authors in America.

Top Banned Authors (2025–2026 School Year)

 

• Stephen King: 312 ban instances (81 titles affected, including It, Carrie, and The Stand)
• Ellen Hopkins: 234 ban instances (Crank, Identical, Tilt)
• Sarah J. Maas: 196 ban instances
• Jodi Picoult: 116 ban instances (Nineteen Minutes)
• Atsushi Ohkubo: 106 ban instances (Fire Force, Soul Eater)
• Hajime Isayama: 89 ban instances
• Cassandra Clare: 88 ban instances
• John Green: 74 ban instances (Looking for Alaska)
• Rumiko Takahashi: 63 ban instances
• George R.R. Martin: 61 ban instances [1, 2, 3]

 

 We just finished reading her latest book, titles “Hollow Bones”, and it is a story about a soman who attempted to kill her own child, a story that is all to common in America today.

The technical name for the disorder she suffers from is called post partem psychosis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/us/marci-webber-mental-hospital-lindsay-clancy.html

This morning’s New York Times carried a story about an Illinois woman who killed her 4-year-old daughter 16 years ago.

Sixteen years ago, Marci Webber killed her 4-year-old daughter, Maggie, in the midst of a psychotic episode, then cut her own wrists. When Ms. Webber’s eldest daughter, then 18, found them in the bathroom, Ms. Webber told her, “Shhh, don’t wake the baby.”

She has been institutionalized in Illinois ever since, but for over a decade she has argued that she no longer needs inpatient care. In November, a judge will decide whether she can go free.

The particulars of Ms. Webber’s case are different from those of Lindsay Clancy, whose recent trial on charges of killing her three young children resulted in a hung jury. Ms. Clancy is scheduled to have a hearing to determine next steps in her case next month. But Ms. Webber’s case offers a look at what long-term institutionalization and involuntary treatment can mean for someone found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Ms. Clancy’s trial lasted three weeks, during which the jury saw autopsy photos and children’s pajamas, and even took a trip to the crime scene. Defense lawyers argued that she was insane, and persuaded all but one juror that she should be found not guilty. Now the prosecutor must decide whether to put her on trial again.

Ms. Webber’s trial, on the other hand, took one day and had one witness, a forensic psychologist. She chose not to have a jury. A judge in DuPage County, the suburban county outside Chicago where the killing occurred, found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

The result has been years of debate and hearings over the role of medications and whether she is stable enough to live outside of a mental health facility. As Ms. Webber has tried to win her freedom, the court has heard conflicting testimony on Ms. Webber’s diagnosis, treatment, behavior and what she says are attempts to force her to take psychiatric drugs.

Prosecutors say Ms. Webber fails to fully grasp the harm she caused, in part because she blames medications, not mental illness, for Maggie’s death.

Involuntary commitment for those found not guilty by reason of insanity is supposed to be for treatment, not punishment. In Illinois, patients may be committed for no longer than what their prison sentence would have been if found guilty — in Ms. Webber’s case, 100 years. There is no minimum.

In many states, such patients receive periodic assessments to determine if inpatient treatment is still needed. In Illinois, a patient may petition the court for release.

In phone interviews from the state hospital where she is being held in Illinois, Ms. Webber spoke of how acutely she missed Maggie. “She was everything to me,” she said.

Years of imprisonment or institutionalization, she argued, will not prevent more children from dying at the hands of their parents. “These mothers are trying to protect their child from something in their heads.”

Ms. Webber, an Army veteran, began taking an antidepressant in the mid-1990s when she was embroiled in a custody dispute with the father of her eldest daughter. Over the years, she was prescribed a host of other antidepressants and antipsychotics, along with a beta blocker sometimes used to treat acute anxiety.

Millions of Americans use medication to treat mental health disorders, and they are considered both safe and effective. A regimen involving several drugs is not necessarily a red flag — experts said it can be desirable in complex illnesses.

“These medications are much more likely to help somebody than hurt somebody, but that doesn’t mean that an individual can’t be harmed,” he said.

Ms. Webber was raising three daughters and attending law school in upstate New York when she became obsessively religious, attending Mass daily and traveling 100 miles to a prayer group on weekends, children in tow. When she spotted a praying mantis at a gas station she “rescued” it, believing it was a sign.

(Editors note: There is nothing wrong with being religious, but excessive religiosity can be a sign of mental illness).

In 2010, Ms. Webber was increasingly worried for Maggie’s safety, believing that she was the target of sexual predators, and moved the girl to her grandmother’s townhouse in Illinois.

Ms. Webber was convinced that Satanists had rented the surrounding properties, and that she was being followed. She kept a knife under her mattress for protection. She felt evil as a physical sensation on her skin.

On Nov. 3, 2010, Ms. Webber’s teenage daughter entered the bathroom to find her sister’s body and the words “divine mercy” written in blood on the wall. Ms. Webber had turned on an audio recorder to capture angels arriving to take her and Maggie to heaven.

In 2014, after the judge’s not guilty verdict and several years of inpatient treatment, Ms. Webber refused psychiatric drugs. Her psychosis did not return, a judge found. Still, in 2017, he denied her release, saying both Ms. Webber and the state needed to do more to prepare. She attempted suicide.

In 2019, that judge released Ms. Webber with a treatment plan, after expressing concern that the state was not treating her fairly.

She returned to her apartment, but prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision and won. After less than two weeks, she returned to the mental institution.

Ms. Webber says that her institutionalization has gone on too long and is harming her physical and mental health.

 

Spoiler alert:

 

“Hollow Bones”, eventually has a happy ending, but it will take you a long time to get to that point.