Most Coloradoans who lived through the horrific Columbine High School massacre and its aftermath, aren't likely to rejoice at the idea of a novel based on a school shooting. Nearly 8 years later, the topic still feels raw and the use of it for so-called entertainment, exploitive.

But despite the subject matter, you won't put down Jodi Picoult's newest novel, Nineteen Minutes. And, amazingly, you won't feel exploited, either.

Picoult's adept character development and intelligent plot twists make for a story that runs deeper than mere voyeurism or titillation. Nineteen Minutes is both a page-turner and a thoughtful exploration of popularity, power, and the social ruts that can define us in ways we may not wish to be defined.

Picoult is the author of 13 previous novels, including such New York Times best-sellers as My Sister's Keeper, The Tenth Circle, Vanishing Acts, and Second Glance. In researching Nineteen Minutes, Picoult interviewed several survivors of school shootings, as well as the Jefferson County sheriff's department (Columbine). While the shooting in Picoult's fictional world in Sterling, N.H., is decidedly different from the events that transpired at Columbine, Picoult's consideration of what it means to be an outsider in high school is poignantly familiar.

Sterling is a small town where everyone knows everyone, and no one imagines that a 17-year-old local boy could become so angered by a lifetime of ridicule and bullying that he could turn his public high school into a shooting ground. It's a calm March morning when Peter Houghton carries an arsenal of guns into school and begins shooting: in the cafeteria, the gym, the locker room, a math room. A mere 19 minutes later, 10 people are dead, and many others lie injured.

The shooting occurs in the first 30 pages of Picoult's novel, and what follows is not a "making of a killer"-type book that revisits Peter's childhood and the bullying he endured to uncover why such an event has happened. Although Picoult does, indeed, explore bullying, she instead retells the fateful 19 minutes - or at least slices of those 19 minutes - again and again from the perspectives of various characters.

When we first read of the shooting, it seems painfully clear who the victims and killer are. But as the novel unfolds, Picoult succeeds in lifting those assumptions up for scrutiny, until villains and victims seem to blend into a motley jumble of alliances and rejection.

One of the novel's most compelling characters is Josie Cormier, a childhood friend of Peter's who has since joined the school's popular crowd, turning her back on her socially inept friend. Even so, Josie feels like an imposter in the popular crowd. Her friends know little of who she is beneath the veneer, and she fears that the slightest misstep could knock her precarious pedestal out from under her: "What made her a princess was hooking up with Matt. And in some weird circular logic, what made Matt hook up with her was the very fact that she was one of Sterling High's princesses."

But Josie's dreamy relationship with Matt is gradually chipping away at who she really is: "Matt pushed her hair off her face and kissed her. This was exactly why she'd told him not to come over last night - when she was with him, she felt herself evaporating. Sometimes, when he touched her, Josie imagined herself vanishing in a puff of steam."

While Josie's boyfriend Matt is fatally shot, Josie escapes without injury but also without any memory of what has transpired. Josie's mother, Alex, a newly appointed superior court judge, is the presiding judge on the case, and, interestingly, it's Josie's eventual revelations that give the novel its greatest jolt in the closing pages.

Again and again, just as the novel is humming along, slowly and decisively answering the questions we have about who, why and where, Picoult tosses in a mild surprise. Consider, for example, a moment when Peter is preparing for his first day in court:

"Peter didn't think he'd slept at all last night, but all the same, he didn't hear the correctional officer coming toward his cell. He startled at the sound of the metal door scraping open.

"'Here,' the man said, and he tossed something at Peter. 'Put it on.'

"He knew that he was going to court today; Jordan McAfee had told him so. He assumed that this was a suit or something. Didn't people always get to wear a suit in court, even if they were coming straight from jail? It was supposed to make them sympathetic. He thought he'd seen that on TV.

"But it wasn't a suit. It was Kevlar, a bulletproof vest."

Peter himself is a curious mix of an innocent kindergartener whose lunch box is rudely tossed out of the school bus window and a merciless killer who stops in the midst of his shooting spree to calmly eat a bowl of Rice Krispies in the school cafeteria.

Impressively, Picoult doesn't make anything about Nineteen Minutes neat or easy or comfortable. Part of what makes the novel so difficult to set down, besides Picoult's smooth prose and driving narrative pace, is that so many of the characters' emotional battles strike unquestionably close to home. It's difficult to imagine how wide and how deep the reverberations of such tragedies reach, but Picoult is not afraid to leap into the depths and explore the humanness of what can lead to such unchecked anger and vengeance.

Jennie A. Camp's reviews, articles, and short stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and other publications. She lives in Platteville.