When I read a novel, it is always a nice little bonus when the author teaches me something about history, geography, technology or any topic that I’m not familiar with. This is the first book I have read by Jodi Picoult, and she managed to teach me about the Yup’ik Eskimos, comic book pencilers, Dante’s Inferno, rape investigation, teen “cutting”, and DNA profiling. This is a lot of education to pack into one story, on top of the emotional stories of teen love gone bad, the effect of an extramarital affair, and a history of violence.

Obviously, this is not a happy story.  Picoult does an excellent job portraying the confused emotions of Trixie, a 14 year-old girl spurned by her first boyfriend. Each choice Trixie makes leads her further down a path of destruction. Meanwhile, Trixie’s parents, Daniel and Laura Stone, are struggling with the effects of an affair on their marriage, and they miss many of the signs of Trixie’s struggles.

Daniel is a comic book penciler who has been given his first comic book series. Laura is a Dante scholar and college professor who teaches a course named “What the Devil is the Inferno?” These two themes are woven through the story in the form of a comic book Daniel writes about a father with a tortured past who navigates the ten circles of Hell to save his daughter. The book includes the actual comic drawings between the chapters, and there is also a hidden message woven into the drawings.

I found the personalites and emotions of Trixie and Laura to be very believable, but Daniel’s tortured past and metamorphosis into mild-mannered, stay-at-home dad was less convincing. I would have liked to know more of the thoughts and feelings of Jason, the teen accused of raping Trixie.  His plight seems lost in the destruction of the Stone family.

The Tenth Circle was a very engaging read, and I will definitely pick up another Picoult novel.