How did Oprah's selection change the author's life?

A farmer's wife who is also a school nurse has possibly been responsible for the drowning death of a child--and then, in a separate incident, she is accused of molesting a child in her care. These horrifying events and their increasingly tense and thriller-like repercussions raise questions about life in the heartland of America.

Like Sue Miller's GOOD MOTHER and Rosellen Brown's BEFORE AND AFTER, this new novel by Jane Hamilton aspires to combine a melodramatic soap-opera plot with highly tuned literary writing, the pacing of a thriller with the psychological detail of a Bildungsroman....[t]he results are something of a mixed bag: bizarrely clumsy and contrived scenes combined with highly moving moments of exceptional emotional clarity, and a motley cast of characters, ranging from the stereotyped to the dexterously well drawn....[The] difficulties are, to some degree, offset by the strengths of Ms. Hamilton's writing: her eye for the emotional detail, her expert manipulation of point of view, her ability to show us Alice's fears and delusions, her need for penance and her yearning for redemption. The reader only hopes that Ms. Hamilton's next book will better showcase her considerable gifts."
-- Michiko Kakutani

"Brilliant, unforgettable story about friendship, loyalty, guilt, and forgiveness--and the vicious power of the mob to destroy innocent lives."