White and Black Hats

When I read fiction, I'm comfortable with guys in white and black hats.  I understand clear good and evil.  I even think, or have thought, that that's the way things should be.  The guy on the white horse with the tin badge shoots the leader of the colloquially-named gang that has been terrorizing the village, and order is restored.  There's probably even a smooch in it for him at the end from his lady love.  But there's one problem with the way I like fiction to be.  Life isn't like that.

Years ago, I joined a book club in my neighborhood.  Each lady chose a book for a month and then hosted the discussion of that book in her home.  One lady, I honestly don't remember who, chose Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult.  I hated that book with a passion because it blurred lines between good and evil that I didn't think ought to be blurred.  I wanted the villain to be the villain, no matter how sorry I secretly felt for him.

Years passed, and I changed.  Then my beloved Jo came out with a new book, and with fear and trepidation for her, I began to read.  (Don't laugh at me calling her Jo.  In my head, we're on a first-name basis, and she loves Dawn Hyperdrive.)  You know how you watch a scene in a movie you kind of want to see and don't want to have seen?  That's how I read her book.  And the very quality that made me hate Jodi Picoult made me love Jo even more than I already did.  Jo loved everybody, even the people who were supposed to be villains.  She understood them with a perfect and charitable empathy.

What if everyone is like Alice's looking glass?  What if there is an alternate reality inside everyone, one we don't see just by knocking on the front door?  What if we never really understand what makes a saint a saint or a villain a villain until we stand in front of the mirror of his soul and see ourselves?

I think I owe Jodi Picoult an apology.