Change of Heart by Jodie Picoult

AZ: "June's first husband was killed in a car crash. Against all the odds, her daughter was uninjured and, in another miracle, June found love again with the policeman who rescued them. Six years on they are a happy family, June pregnant with their own child. But now June's second daughter is dying without the new heart she so urgently needs. And her first daughter, along with her husband, is dead, killed by Shay Bourne, an itinerant workman they welcomed into their home. The crime was so heinous that Shay has been given the death penalty for the first time in 69 years in New Hampshire. Shay is going to die, and he is looking for redemption. He wants to give June's daughter his heart . . ."

A man receives the death penalty for murdering a little girl and her stepfather. There is no question whether or not he did it so, knowing Picoult, the heart of the matter must be elsewhere. The murderer has no previous history of violence and after his death he wants his heart to be given to the surviving daughter, the murdered girl's half sister who was in utero when her father and sister were murdered. Stranger occurances begin taking place in the prison and the reader is as torn between faith and scepticism as the characters. When we are made aware of Shay's past of taking the blame for actions such as previous arson and murder it begins to dawn on the rader and other characters whey and how the murders took place.