Ruth has been an exceptional nurse, working at Mercy-West Haven for 20 years. But when parents of a newborn insist that she cease to be involved in the care of their baby, Ruth, an African American, can do very little but abide by the parent’s wishes and her superiors’ instructions.

Ruth is upset by this development, particularly with the hospital’s lack of support for her by acceding to this request from the parents, but she carries on as usual. As a single parent who has a high-achieving son and an elderly mother to look out for, she has little time to stop and ponder the challenges that life presents to her.

When Ruth ends up monitoring the same baby after he undergoes minor surgery she questions the circumstances, but because of short staffing there is no alternative. Soon after the baby starts having a seizure, and Ruth is torn between following orders and behaving according to her conscience.

Ruth decides to assist the child, but it dies, starting a chain of events that turn her world upside down and make her look at everything she has achieved in her life with new eyes.

As the story of Ruth’s plight is told we also learn about the baby’s parents, Turk and Brit, who are white supremacists. After they lose their son their bitterness makes their need to blame someone

A third story – about white lawyer Kennedy McQuarrie – is interweaved with those of Ruth and the baby’s parents. Kennedy takes on Ruth’s case, and it’s her first big case after years of defending petty-crime offenders. Kennedy is challenged and confronted by both the overt and the insidious racism that Ruth has experienced all her life.

The title (based on a quote from Martin Luther King Jr: ‘If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.’) is what drives Ruth to take on the big issue of racism that she has pushed to the back of her mind for too long.

While Jodi Picoult has attempted to explore several significant issues and raised some valid points, unfortunately the ending is overly neat and contrived, detracting from the seriousness of these issues.

Reviewed by Melissa Wilson