Larger cover

Book 12: Vanishing Acts

• Watch (and listen to) Jodi in a multimedia presentation of Vanishing Acts

Publisher: Atria Books, March 2005; paperback version, Washington Square Press, November 2005

• A short synopsis
• What others are saying…
• Book club discussion questions
• Read two excerpts

Synopsis

Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiancé, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as she plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can’t recall. And when a policemen arrives to disclose a truth that will upend the world as she knows it, Delia must search through these memories – even when they have the potential to devastate her life, and the lives of those she loves most. Vanishing Acts is a book about the nature and power of memory; about what happens when the past we have been running from catches up to us… and what happens when the memory we thought had vanished returns as a threat.

What others are saying about Vanishing Acts…

A Featured Alternate of the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Clubs.

"Picoult.... is a pro at lively storytelling. Vanishing Acts is richly textured and engaging."

—The Boston Globe

"What is it about a Jodi Picoult novel that wraps the reader tighter than a spider's silk in the timely, but never trendy, intricacies of story? Never more gripping is the master plotter than in this, the story of Delia Hopkins, a rescue tracker on the run from strange and terrifying mysteries that stubbornly surface from her own past. Delia can rescue the lost with a wizard's skill, but can she rescue herself? Jodi Picoult is a modern treasure."

—Jacquelyn Mitchard

"The worlds Picoult creates for her characters resonate with authenticity, and the people who inhabit them are so engaging."

—People

" Picoult is a master at convincing readers that there are shades of gray between what is right and wrong."

—Orlando Sentinel

"Picoult makes us ponder the ambiguous relationships between love and lying, legality and morality; the strange ways repressed memories leak into the present."

—Los Angeles Times

"Each deftly defined character, event, and circumstance in Picoult's story leads to a resolution that is credible and points to the craft of the author. Pulling off a story like this one is no easy task, yet it is done with supreme expertise."

—Tulsa World

“As usual, Picoult spins a terrifically suspenseful tale by developing just the right human-interest elements…an experience novelist takes her sweet time to rich rewards: overall, an affecting saga, nicely handled.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Book club discussion questions for Vanishing Acts

1. When she learns she was kidnapped as a child, Delia’s choice of profession takes on a new significance. What motivated Delia to pursue a career in search-and-rescue? Does she view it differently once she knows about her past? A recurrent theme in Vanishing Acts is self-identity. Are we products of our pasts, or do we have more control over whom we become?
2. Delia says that as children she, Fitz, and Eric each had their roles: “Fitz was the dreamer; I was the practical tactician. Eric, on the other hand, was the front man: the one who could charm adults or other kids with equal ease.” Have they continued these roles into adulthood? How so? Is each one comfortable in his or her role, or is there a longing to be something different?
3. In one instance Eric muses that “there are people in this world who have done worse things than Andrew Hopkins.” What is your opinion of what Andrew did—taking Delia away from her mother and creating a new life for the two of them? From a legal standpoint, is he guilty of a crime? How about from a moral standpoint?
4. Andrew himself says, “Does it really matter why I did it? By now, you’ve already formed your impression. You believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person’s past has nothing to do with his future.” A person cannot change his or her past actions, but can they make up for the hurt they’ve caused by helping others? Does the good that Andrew has done for the town of Wexton and for the senior citizens in his care—not to mention the happy childhood he gave Delia—make up for or excuse his taking his daughter? What do you make of Elise’s remark to Andrew that Delia “turned out absolutely perfect”?
5. Andrew says, “Believe what you want, but be prepared to answer this question: In my shoes, how do you know you wouldn't have done the same thing?” Would you have done the same thing? If you feel that what Andrew did was wrong, what would have been a more appropriate alternative to ensure Delia's best interests?
6. Eric believes that he does not have “the experience or the wits or the confidence” to represent Andrew. Why then does he agree to take on the case? Why does he continue to act as Andrew’s attorney even when it causes tension between him and Delia?
7. In one instance Delia says to Fitz about meeting her mother for the first time, “I want this to be perfect. I want her to be perfect. But what if she’s not? What if I’m not?” How does the reality measure up when she finally meets her mother? What kind of understanding do Delia and Elise come to? Why does Elise give Delia the “spell”—is it to help Andrew or her daughter?
8. Delia believes “it takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.” How do the characters in the novel, including Delia herself, prove this to be true?
9. During the trial, Eric tells the court he is an alcoholic. What does the exchange between Eric and Delia while he is questioning her on the witness stand reveal about their relationship? Do they view each other differently after this exchange? As two people who love alcoholics, how does Delia’s treatment of Eric differ from Andrew’s treatment of Elise? Whose actions and reactions, given their partner’s disease, do you support?
10. Eric says to Andrew, “Everyone deserves a second chance.” How does the idea of second chances play out in Vanishing Acts? Are there any characters who deserve a second chance and don’t get one? And, conversely – are there any characters who do get a second chance – and squander it?
11. In what ways does Elise's alcoholism significantly impact both Delia and Eric, and the choices that they ultimately make?
12. In what way does Delia's romantic relationship with Fitz, while engaged to Eric, parallel Andrew's decision to kidnap Delia?
13. Elise tells Delia, “If you had grown up with me, this is one of the things I would have tried to teach you: marry a man who loves you more than you love him. Because I have done both now, and when it is the other way around, there is no spell in the world that can even out the balance.” Discuss this in terms of Delia’s relationships with both Eric and Fitz. Which man do you think Delia should be with, and why?
14. Both Delia and Sophie quickly develop a close relationship with Ruthann. When Ruthann commits suicide, Delia is there to witness it. Why does she not try to stop Ruthann? What does Delia come to realize about herself from this experience?
15. Many of the chapters told from Andrew’s point of view occur while he is in prison, “where everyone reinvents himself.” What do these scenes, which depict in graphic detail the harsh realities of life behind bars, reveal about Andrew? What do they add to the overall storyline?
16. Right versus wrong is a dominant theme in Vanishing Acts—whether Andrew was right or wrong to kidnap Delia, whether Eric is right or wrong to hide his continued drinking from Delia, whether Delia is right or wrong not to stop Ruthann. How do the multiple perspectives in the story blur these lines and show how two people can view the same situation completely different? Were there any instances you changed your mind about something in the story after reading a different character’s viewpoint?
17. Fitz tells Delia, “I think you’re angry at yourself, for not being smart enough to figure this out all on your own… If you don’t want someone to change your life for you again, Dee, you’ve got to change it yourself.” How do Fitz’s words make Delia see her circumstances differently?
18. In what way does Delia's romantic relationship with Fitz, while engaged to Eric, parallel Andrew's decision to kidnap Delia?
19. Ruthann introduces Delia to the Hopi creation myth, which suggests that humans have outgrown the world four times already, and are about to inhabit a fifth. Do most people outgrow their origins? Is reinvention part of the human experience? How do each of the characters actions support or disprove this?
20. At one point, we learn that Fitz has not been writing about Andrew’s trial, but about Delia. In fact, when he reads the first few pages to her, we can recognize them as the first few pages of this book. How does this affect the story you read? Is Fitz a reliable narrator?
21. Much is made of the nature of memory – whether it is stored physically, whether it can be conjured at will, whether it can be organically triggered or planted. Ultimately, do you believe Delia’s recovered memories at the end of the book? Why or why not?
22. Delia says on page 151: “Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.” Do you agree or disagree? Is doing the wrong thing EVER the right thing? Are there are ever circumstances that justify breaking the law?
23. How are each of the main characters—Delia, Fitz, Eric, Andrew, and Elise—most changed by the events that take place? Where do you envision the characters five years from now?

• Return

Excerpt 1 from Vanishing Acts

Delia			
You can’t exist in this world without leaving a piece
of yourself behind. There are concrete paths, like credit
card receipts and appointment calendars and promises
you’ve made to others. There are microscopic clues,
like fingerprints, that stay invisible unless you know how
to look for them. But even in the absence of any of this,
there’s scent. We live in a cloud that moves with us
as we check e-mail and jog and make love and carpool. The
whole time, we shed skin – 40,000 cells per minute, on
rafts that rise on a current up our legs and under our
chins. In the air or on the ground, bacteria attack,
creating vapor trails.
      Today, I’m running behind Greta, who picks up
the pace just as we hit the twisted growth at the base of
the mountain. I’m soaked to the thighs with muck and
slush, although it doesn’t seem to be bothering my
bloodhound any. The awful conditions that make it so hard to
navigate are the same conditions that have preserved this
trail.
      The officer from the Carroll, NH police department who
is supposed to be accompanying me has fallen behind. He
takes one look at the terrain Greta is bulldozing and shakes
his head. “Forget it,” he says.
“There’s no way a four-year-old would have made
it through this mess.”
      The truth is, he’s probably right. At this time
of the afternoon, as the ground cools down under a setting
sun, air currents run down-slope – which means that
although the girl probably walked through flatter area some
distance away, Greta is picking up the scent trail where
it’s drifted. “Greta disagrees,” I say.
      Human scents are like snowflakes – each
one’s different. Blindfolded, I could tell you
who’s come into a room at our house – the
lily-milk and powder smell of my daughter, Sophie; or the
combination of woodsmoke, sage, and pencil-shavings that
always reminds me of my father. Greta, though, is even more
discriminating. Fifty percent of her nose is devoted to the
sense of smell; compared to only one square inch of mine. A
dog can smell a thousand times better than a human. So if
Greta says that Holly Gardiner wandered out of the
playground at Sticks & Stones Day Care and climbed to
the top of Mount Deception, I’m going to hike right up
there to find her.
      “ Find her,” I tell Greta, and she bends
her head. She casts around to pick up the scent again, and
then starts to run. I sprint after the dog, wincing as a
branch snaps back against my face and opens a cut over my
left eye. We tear through a snarl of vines and burst onto a
narrow footpath that opens up into a clearing.
      The little girl is sitting on the wet ground,
shivering, arms lashed tight over her knees. Just like
always, for a moment her face is Sophie’s, and I have
to stop my heart from tripping over that tightrope of panic.
The girl blinks up at us, slowly pecking her way through a
shell of fear. “I bet you’re Holly.” I
shrug off my jacket, ripe with body heat, and settle it over
her clothespin shoulders. “My name is Delia. Are you
hurt?”
      She shakes her head and touches the cut over my eye.
“You are.”
      Just then the Carroll police officer bursts into the
clearing. “I’ll be damned,” he wheezes.
“You actually found her.”
      I always do. But it isn’t my track record that
keeps me in this business. It’s not the adrenaline
rush; it’s not even the potential happy ending.
It’s because, when you get down to it, I’m lost.
      
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      I watch the reunion between mother and daughter from a
distance – how Holly melts into her mother’s
arms, how relief binds them like a seam. Even if she’d
been a different race than her daughter or dressed like a
gypsy, I would have been able to pick this woman out of a
crowd: she is the one who seems unraveled, half of a whole.
      For a long time, all I had of my mother was a smell
– a mixture of vanilla and apples could bring her back
as if she were standing a foot away – and then this
disappeared too. Not even Greta can find someone without
that initial clue.
      From where she is sitting beside me, Greta nuzzles my
forehead, reminding me that I’m bleeding. I wonder if
I’ll need stitches; if this will launch my father into
another tirade about why I should have become something
relatively safer, like a bounty hunter or the leader of a
bomb squad.
      Someone hands me a gauze pad, which I press against
the cut above my eye. When I glance up I see it’s
Fitz. “What does the other guy look like?” he
asks.
      “ I got attacked by a tree.”
      “ Yeah, well, you know what they say. Their bark
is worse than their bite.”
      Fitzwilliam MacMurray grew up in one of the houses
beside mine; Eric Talcott lived in the other. I have a long
history with both of them that includes drying slugs on the
pavement with Morton’s salt, dropping water balloons
off the elementary school roof, and kidnapping the gym
teacher’s cat. As kids, we grew up in each
other’s pockets; as adults, we are still best friends.
In fact, Fitz will be pulling double duty at my wedding
– as Eric’s best man, and as my man-of-honor.
      From this angle, Fitz is enormous. He’s
six-four, with a shock of red hair that makes him look like
he’s on fire, and he’s a reporter for the paper
with the largest circulation in our state. “I need a
quote from you,” he says.
      “ Make something up.”
      He laughs. “Hey, I work for the New Hampshire
Gazette, not the New York Times.”
      “ Excuse me… ”
      We both turn at the sound of a woman’s voice.
Holly Gardiner’s mother is staring at me, her
expression so full of words that for a moment, she
can’t choose the right one. “Thank you,”
she says finally. “Thank you so much.”
      “ Thank Greta,” I correct. “She did
all the work.”
      The woman is on the verge of tears; the weight of the
moment as heavy and sudden as rain. She grabs my hand and
squeezes, a pulse of understanding caught between us, before
she heads back to the rescue workers who are taking care of
Holly.
      There were times I missed my mother desperately while
I was growing up – when all the other kids at school
had two parents at the Holiday Concert; when I got my period
and had to sit down with my father to read the directions on
the Tampax box; when I first kissed Eric and felt like I
might burst out of my skin.
      Now.
      Fitz slings his arm over my shoulders.
“It’s not like you missed out,” he says
softly. “Your dad was better than most parents put
together.”
      “ I know,” I reply, but I watch Holly
Gardiner and her mother walk to their car hand in hand, like
two jewels on a delicate strand that might at any moment be
broken.
      
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      That night Greta and I are the lead story on the
evening news. In rural New Hampshire, we don’t get
broadcasts of gang wars and murders and serial rapists, but
instead, barns that burn down and ribbon-cuttings at local
hospitals and local heroes like me. Sophie is puddle on the
living room floor – she still takes an occasional nap
after I pick her up from kindergarten, but today I was on a
search and my father had to bring her back to the senior
center with him until closing time.
      My father and I stand in the kitchen, getting dinner
ready. At nearly sixty, he is good-looking – ageless,
almost, with his salt-and-pepper hair and runner’s
build. Although there were any number of women who would
have thrown themselves at a man like Andrew Hopkins, he only
dated sporadically, and he never remarried after my mother
died. He used to say that life was all about a boy finding
the perfect girl; he was lucky enough to have been handed
his in a labor and delivery room.
      “When’s Eric coming?” he asks.
“I can’t keep this cooking much longer.”
      “Eric was supposed to be here a half hour
ago.” I try to keep out of my voice all the places I
am imagining my fiancé: Murphy’s Bar on Main
Street, or Callahan’s on North Park; off the road in a
ditch somewhere.
      My father glances up at me. “Delia, if you
clench your jaw any harder you’re going to crack a
molar.”
      Sophie comes into the kitchen. “Mom? Jennica
from school? She has warts.”
      “That’s too bad,” I reply.
      “I want warts. He’s green and soft and
right on the tag it says his name.”
      Apparently, Warts is the hot new Beanie Baby.
“Maybe for your birthday,” I offer.
      “I bet you’ll forget that, too,” she
says flatly, and she runs up the stairs.
      All of a sudden I can see the red circle on my
calendar – the parent-child tea in her kindergarten
class started at one o’clock, when I was halfway up a
mountain searching for Holly Gardiner.
      I don’t have any precedent to follow for
motherhood. My own was gone by the time I was four; to be
honest, when I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t even
sure I was going to keep the baby. I wasn’t married,
and Eric was having enough trouble without tossing in the
added responsibility of a child. In the end, though, I
couldn’t go through with it. I wanted to be the kind
of mother who couldn’t be separated from a child
without putting up a fight. I wanted to believe my own
mother had been that way.
      I find Sophie lying on her bed. “I am so, so
sorry.”
      She looks up at me. “When you’re with
them,” she asks, a slice through the heart, “do
you ever think about me?”
      In response, I pick Sophie up and settle her on my
lap. “I think about you even when I’m
sleeping,” I say.
      Parenting – with and without Eric, depending on
the year – has been much harder than I ever expected.
I don’t understand why there are manifestos on how to
train a search and rescue hound, or how to get into an Ivy
League college or build a sunroom with scrap wood, yet no
one has tackled a comprehensive guide to raising a child.
      Whatever I do right I chalk up to my father’s
example. Whatever I do wrong I blame squarely on fate.
      
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      As one of Wexton’s three attorneys, Eric does
real estate transfers and wills and the occasional divorce,
but he’s done a little trial work too –
representing defendants charged with DUI and petty thefts.
He usually wins, which is no surprise to me. After all, more
than once I have been a jury of one, and I’ve always
managed to be persuaded.
      Case in point: my wedding. I was perfectly happy to
sign a marriage certificate at the courthouse. But then Eric
suggested that maybe a big party wasn’t such a bad
idea – and before I knew what had happened, I was
buried in a pile of brochures for reception venues, and band
tapes, and price lists from florists.
      I’m sitting on the living room floor after
dinner, swatches of fabric covering my legs like a patchwork
quilt. “Who cares whether the napkins are blue or
teal?” I complain. “Isn’t teal really just
blue on steroids, anyway?”
      I hand him a stack of photo albums; we are supposed to
find ten of Eric and ten of me as an introductory montage to
the wedding video. He cracks the first one open, and
there’s a picture of Eric and Fitz and me rolled fat
as sausages in our snowsuits. I’m between the two
boys; it’s like that in most of the pictures.
      “Look at my hair,” Eric says. “I
look like Dorothy Hamill.”
      “No, I look like Dorothy Hamill. You look like a
Portobello mushroom.”
      Long after the point where girls played with girls and
boys played with boys, Fitz and Eric and I remained a
triumvirate. My father used to call us Siamese triplets.
Then one night when we were fifteen we told our parents we
were going on a class trip and instead climbed to the top of
Dartmouth’s Baker tower to watch a meteor shower. We
drank peach schnapps stolen from Eric’s parents’
liquor cabinet and watched the stars play tag with the moon.
Fitz fell asleep holding the bottle and Eric and I waited
for the cursive of comets. Did you see that one? Eric asked.
When I couldn’t find the falling star, he took my hand
and guided my finger. And then he just kept holding on.
      By the time we climbed down at 4:30 A.M., I had had my
first kiss, and it wasn’t the three of us anymore.
      In the next two photo albums I pick up, I am older.
Just then, my father comes into the room. “I’m
headed upstairs to watch Leno,” he says. “Lock
up, okay?”
      I glance at him. “Where are all my baby
pictures?”
      “In the albums.”
      “No, they’re not. These only go back to
when I’m four or five.” I sit up. “It
would be nice to have a picture of mom, for the video,
too.”
      I have the only photo of my mother that is on display
in this house. She is on the cusp of smiling, and you cannot
look at it without wondering who made her happy just then,
and how.
      My father looks down at the ground, and shakes his
head a little. “Well, I knew it was going to happen
sometime. Come on, then.”
      Eric and I follow my father to his bedroom and sit
down on the double bed, on the side he where doesn’t
sleep. From the closet, he takes down a tin with a
Pepsi-Cola logo stamped onto the front. He dumps the
contents onto the covers between Eric and me – dozens
of photographs of my mother, draped in peasant skirts and
gauze blouses, her black hair hanging down her back like a
river. A wedding portrait: my mother in a belled white
dress; my father trussed in his tuxedo, looking like he
might bolt at any second. Photos of me, wrapped tight as a
croissant, awkwardly balanced in my mother’s arms. And
one of my mother and father on an ugly green couch with me
between them, a bridge made of dimpled flesh, of blended
blood.
      It is like visiting another planet when you only have
one roll of film to record it; like coming to a banquet
after a hunger strike – there is so much here that I
have to consciously keep myself from racing through, before
it all disappears. My face gets hot, as if I’ve been
slapped. “Why were you hiding these?”
      “ I tried keeping a few of the pictures
out,” my father explains, “but you kept asking
when she was coming home. And I’d pass them, and stop,
and lose ten minutes or a half hour or a half day. I
didn’t hide them because I didn’t want to look
at them, Delia. I hid them because that was all I wanted to
do.” He puts the wedding photo back in the tin and
piles the scattered mass of the rest on top. “You can
have them,” my father tells me. “You can have
them all.”
      He leaves us sitting in the near dark in his own
bedroom. Eric picks up the tin and touches the photographs
on the top as if they are as delicate as milkweed.
“That,” he says quietly. “That’s
what I want with you.”