The Humanity Project Author:Jean Thompson After surviving a shooting at her high school, Linnea is packed off to live with her estranged father, Art, who doesn?t quite understand how he has suddenly become responsible for raising a sullen adolescent girl. Art?s neighbor, Christie, is a nurse distracted by an eccentric patient, Mrs. Foster, who has given Christie the reins to her ?Humani... more »ty Project,? a bizarre and well-endowed charity fund. Just as mysteriously, no one seems to know where Conner, the Fosters? handyman, goes after work, but he has become the one person Linnea can confide in, perhaps because his own home life is a war zone; his father has suffered an injury and become addicted to painkillers. As these characters and many more hurtle toward their fates, The Humanity Project is born: Can you indeed pay someone to be good? At what price?
Jean Thompson?a ?masterful? (Kirkus Reviews) writer of ?wise and absorbing? (People) stories?is at the height of her powers here, crafting emotionally suspenseful and thoroughly entertaining characters, in which we inevitably see ourselves. The Humanity Project is bound to be the next Big American Novel, at once a multi-faceted ensemble drama and a deftly observant story of our twenty-first-century society. « less