White Oleander

White Oleander is a novel by the American writer Janet Fitch, published in 1999. It was chosen for Oprah's Book Club and was later adapted into a film.

Astrid Magnussen is twelve and living in Los Angeles, California, with her mother, Ingrid, a self-centred and eccentric poet. Astrid's father, Klaus Anders, left before she was old enough to remember him. Ingrid begins a relationship with a man named Barry, discovers that he is cheating on her with younger women, breaks into his house and poisons him with a mixture of DMSO and oleander sap.

Barry dies and Ingrid is charged with his murder. She is sentenced to life in prison, and she promises her daughter that she will come back. Astrid, meanwhile, is shuffled from one foster home to another over the years that follow.

The first of those homes belongs to Starr, a former stripper recovering from drink and drugs who has two children of her own and two other foster children in the house. Astrid is fourteen by then, and she is sexually exploited by Starr's adult boyfriend, Ray. The novel is written in the manner of a picaresque, and it deals with motherhood and with what a series of temporary homes does to a girl whose mother is in prison.