In their sophomore year, Josie begins dating Matt, a popular jock who leads his friends Drew Girard and John Eberhard in bullying Peter. When Joey is killed in a car accident in 2006, Lacy and Lewis Houghton are too upset to pay attention to their remaining son, causing a bigger rift between Peter and his parents. Joey is a popular straight-A student and athlete, but feels it necessary to ridicule Peter to protect his reputation, even fabricating a story that Peter was adopted. The story pictures Peter as an outcast at home as well Peter believes his older brother Joey is favored by their parents. The friends slowly drifted apart as they got older: Josie joined the popular crowd in order to protect her own interests, seeing her relationship to Peter as embarrassing. Peter was frequently the target of severe bullying at school, and Josie often stuck up for him. In the past, the reader learns that Peter and Josie were once close friends. Throughout the book, time flashes back and forth between events before and after the shooting. The shooting kills ten people (nine students and one teacher) and wounds many other people. While Matt is dead, having been the only victim shot twice, Josie is not seriously injured, but only shocked: she cannot remember what happened. After passing several dead and wounded victims, Patrick traps and arrests the shooter, Peter Houghton, in the locker room, where he finds two students, Josie Cormier and Matt Royston, lying on the floor surrounded in blood. When Patrick, the only detective on the Sterling police force, arrives at Sterling High, he searches the school to seek out the gunman, who is alleged to be a student. As the students are distracted by the noise, gunshots are fired.

Suddenly, a loud bang is heard from the parking lot, which turns out to be a bomb set off in Matt Royston's car. The story begins on Main the small town of Sterling, New Hampshire, tracking the lives of a number of characters on an 'ordinary day.' The characters include Alex Cormier, a superior court judge her daughter Josie, a junior in high school Lacy, Lewis, and Peter Houghton Detective Patrick Ducharme and several victims-to-be.Īt the local high school, Sterling High, the story follows a routine day of students in classes, at the gym, and in the cafeteria. This novel follows the unfolding of a school shooting, including the events leading up to the incident and the aftermath of the incident. It was Picoult's first book to debut at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Nineteen Minutes (2007) is the fourteenth novel by the American author, Jodi Picoult.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult