Jodi's Covid conspiracy 'THE STORY I NEEDED TO TELL'

The world-famous writer reached out to others aff ected by the pandemic to create a compelling new read

- Wendyl Nissen

Bestselling author Jodi Picoult has never had writer’s block and has been reading voraciously since the age of three. But when the pandemic struck, she found herself “all at sea”.

“I couldn’t read because I couldn’t focus on anything and I couldn’t write, which is pretty upsetting for someone who writes books for a living,” she tells the Weekly from her home in New Hampshire, USA.

“I have always used reading as a crutch and now I couldn’t even do that.”

The arrival of the pandemic in early 2020 signaled a huge lifestyle change for Jodi, 55, who has asthma. She was too scared to leave her house for 15 months.

“On a good day, I can’t breathe, so I thought if I catch Covid, I’m going to be one of those people who ends up ventilated and in the hospital because my lungs aren’t strong enough,” she says.

“So I did not go to the grocery store, I did not go anywhere – my husband Tim [van Leer] did that. It was a complete disruption to my life, my schedule and my career.”

One thing Jodi did do was hike. She would meet friends outside and while staying two meters apart, they walked nine to 12 kilometers a day.

“I basically walked to California from New Hampshire over the course of the pandemic,” she laughs.

Finally, Jodi found her way back to reading through romance novels, which she found she could read because they had a happy ending.

“There was too much crap going on in the world, so I needed to know that a story was going to work out.”