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Summary
Summary
A life hanging in the balance...a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family, love, and letting go.
A life hanging in the balance . . . a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family secrets, love, and letting go.
In the wild, when a wolf knows its time is over, when it knows it is of no more use to its pack, it may sometimes choose to slip away. Dying apart from its family, it stays proud and true to its nature. Humans aren't so lucky.
Luke Warren has spent his life researching wolves. He has written about them, studied their habits intensively, and even lived with them for extended periods of time. In many ways, Luke understands wolf dynamics better than those of his own family. His wife, Georgie, has left him, finally giving up on their lonely marriage. His son, Edward, twenty-four, fled six years ago, leaving behind a shattered relationship with his father. Edward understands that some things cannot be fixed, though memories of his domineering father still inflict pain. Then comes a frantic phone call: Luke has been gravely injured in a car accident with Edward's younger sister, Cara.
Suddenly everything changes: Edward must return home to face the father he walked out on at age eighteen. He and Cara have to decide their father's fate together. Though there's no easy answer, questions abound: What secrets have Edward and his sister kept from each other? What hidden motives inform their need to let their father die . . . or to try to keep him alive? What would Luke himself want? How can any family member make such a decision in the face of guilt, pain, or both? And most importantly, to what extent have they all forgotten what a wolf never forgets: that each member of a pack needs the others, and that sometimes survival means sacrifice?
Another tour de force by Picoult, Lone Wolf brilliantly describes the nature of a family: the love, protection, and strength it can offer--and the price we might have to pay for those gifts. What happens when the hope that should sustain a family is the very thing tearing it apart?
Author Notes
Jodi Picoult was born in Nesconset, New York on May 19, 1966. She received a degree in creative writing from Princeton University in 1987 and a master's degree in education from Harvard University. She published two short stories in Seventeen magazine while still in college. Immediately after graduation, she landed a variety of jobs, ranging from editing textbooks to teaching eighth-grade English.
Her first book, Songs of the Humpback Whale, was published in 1992. Her other works include Picture Perfect, Mercy, The Pact, Salem Falls, The Tenth Circle, Nineteen Minutes, Change of Heart, Handle with Care, House Rules, Sing You Home, Lone Wolf, Leaving Time, and Small Great Things. My Sister's Keeper was made into a movie starring Cameron Diaz. She received the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. She also wrote five issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series for DC Comics. She writes young adult novels with her daughter Samantha van Leer including Between the Lines and Off the Page.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Picoult returns with two provocative questions: can a human join a wolf pack, and who has the right to make end-of-life decisions? Luke Warren, a vital free spirit, has devoted himself to understanding wolf behavior, to the point of having once abandoned his family to live with wolves. Now divorced and raising his 17-year-old daughter, Cara, near his wolf compound, Luke sustains a traumatic brain injury in an accident. His ex-wife, Georgie, remarried to a lawyer, summons Cara's brother, Edward, from Thailand, where he's lived for years alienated from his family, who assume the estrangement stems from his father's rejection of Edward's homosexuality. Cara wants to keep her father on life support; Edward struggles with resentment but believes his father wouldn't want to exist in a vegetative state. As Cara and Edward navigate their own conflicts and Luke languishes in a coma, Picoult folds in mesmerizing excerpts of Luke's book about life with the wolves. There are no surprises, as Picoult (My Sister's Keeper) as usual probes intriguing matters of the heart while introducing her fans to subjects they might not otherwise explore. You can always count on Picoult for a terrific page-turner about a compelling subject. Agent: Laura Gross, Laura Gross Literary Agency. (Feb. 28) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Estranged from his family while living in Thailand for the past six years, Edward Warren is summoned home to New Hampshire when his father, Luke, a renowned wolf expert, and Edward's 17-year-old sister, Cara, are critically injured in a car accident. Cara's wounds are not life-threatening, but Luke has suffered severe brain damage and languishes in a vegetative state doctors say is irreversible. As his father's legal next-of-kin, it falls to Edward to make the hard choices about life support and organ donation, a nearly impossible responsibility, given that father and son parted on angry terms the night Edward tried to confide to Luke that he was gay. Then Cara becomes a volatile advocate for her father's right-to-life, taking impulsive steps to wrest control away from Edward. Though the author's loyal Pi-cult following will drive demand, this latest offering lacks the emotional nuance that may have won Picoult her fans. Worthy discussions about critical end-of-life medical and moral issues are often eclipsed by overwrought teenage melodrama and heavy-handed working of the lone wolf/Luke Warren trope. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Picoult will conduct a national author tour backed by extensive advertising and publicity for this topical drama by a reliably prolific and avidly popular author.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Biologist Luke Warren leaves his family for two years to join a wild wolf pack in Canada to learn as an insider about their behavior. When returning from the wild, he can't seem to rejoin civilization, and his human family disintegrates. A car crash leaves Luke in a vegetative state; his neurosurgeon is 99 percent certain he will never regain consciousness. Someone must decide whether to keep him on life support. His son and daughter disagree about what to do, and the family faces the moral and ethical dilemma in court. VERDICT Picoult skillfully interweaves the pros and cons of this familial conflict with information about wolves-their family groups, interactions, rules, and how they teach their young. The story is well read by Natalia Payne, Louis Changchien, Celeste Ciulla, Nick Cordero, Angela Goethals, Mark Zeisler, and Andy Patis. Recommended. ["Picoult once again has written a compelling story involving current issues and family drama with a unique twist," read the review of the New York Times best-selling Atria: S. & S. hc, LJ 2/1/12.-Ed.]-Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
LUKE In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have freed the tiger. The others were easy enough: the lumbering, grateful pair of elephants; the angry capuchin monkey that spit at my feet when I jimmied the lock; the snowy Arabian horses whose breath hung in the space between us like unanswered questions. Nobody gives animals enough credit, least of all circus trainers, but I knew the minute they saw me in the shadows outside their cages they would understand, which is why even the noisiest bunch--the parrots that had been bullied into riding on the ridiculous cumulus-cloud heads of poodles--beat their wings like a single heart while making their escape. I was nine years old, and Vladistav's Amazing Tent of Wonders had come to Beresford, New Hampshire--which was a miracle in its own right, since nothing ever came to Beresford, New Hampshire, except for skiers who were lost, and reporters during presidential primaries who stopped off to get coffee at Ham's General Store or to take a leak at the Gas'n'Go. Almost every kid I knew had tried to squeeze through the holes in the temporary fencing that had been erected by the circus carnies so that we could watch the show without having to pay for a ticket. And in fact that was how I first saw the circus, hiding underneath the bleachers and peering through the feet of paying customers with my best friend, Louis. The inside of the tent was painted with stars. It seemed like something city people would do, because they hadn't realized that if they just took down the tent, they could see real stars instead. Me, I'd grown up with the outdoors. You couldn't live where I did--on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest--and not have spent your fair share of nights camping and looking up at the night sky. If you let your eyes adjust, it looked like a bowl of glitter that had been turned over, like the view from inside a snow globe. It made me feel sorry for these circus folks, who had to improvise with stencils instead. I will admit that, at first, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the red sequined topcoat of the ringmaster and the endless legs of the girl on the tightrope. When she did a split in the air and landed with her legs veed around the wire, Louis let out the breath he'd been holding. Lucky rope, he said. Then they started to bring out the animals. The horses were first, rolling their angry eyes. Then the monkey, in a silly bellman's outfit, which climbed onto the saddle of the lead horse and bared his teeth at the audience as he rode around and around. The dogs that jumped through hoops, the elephants that danced as if they were in a different time zone, the rainbow fluster of birds. Then came the tiger. There was a lot of hype, of course. About how dangerous a beast he was, about how we shouldn't try this at home. The trainer, who had a doughy, freckled face like a cinnamon roll, stood in the middle of the ring as the hatch on the tiger's cage was lifted. The tiger roared and, even as far away as I was, I smelled his bouillon breath. He leaped onto a metal stand and swiped at the air. He stood on his hind legs on command. He turned in a circle. I knew a thing or two about tigers. Like: If you shaved one, its skin would still be striped. And every tiger had a white mark on the back of each ear, so that it seemed like it was keeping an eye on you even when it was walking away. Like: They belonged in the wild. Not here, in Beresford, while the crowd shouted and clapped. In that instant two things happened. First, I realized I didn't much like the circus anymore. Second, the tiger stared right at me, as if he had searched out my seat number beforehand. I knew exactly what he wanted me to do. After the evening show, the performers went down to the lake behind the elementary school to drink and play poker and swim. It meant that most of their trailers, parked behind the big top, were empty. There was a guard--an Everest of a man with a shaved head and a hoop ring piercing his nose--but he was snoring to beat the band, with an empty bottle of vodka beside him. I slipped inside the fence. Even in retrospect, I can't tell you why I did it. It was something between that tiger and me; that knowledge that I was free, and he wasn't. The fact that his unpredictable, raw life had been reduced to a sideshow at three and seven. The trickiest cage to unlatch was the monkey's. Most, though, I could open with an ice pick I'd stolen from my grandfather's liquor cabinet. I let out the animals swiftly and quietly, watching them slip into the folds of the night. They seemed to understand that discretion was in order; not even the parrots made a sound as they disappeared. The last one I freed was the tiger. I figured the other animals ought to have a good fifteen minutes of lead time to get away before I released a predator on their heels. So I crouched down in front of the cage and drew in the soft dirt with a pebble, marking time on my wristwatch. I was sitting there, waiting, when the Bearded Lady walked by. She saw me right away. "Well, well," she said, although I couldn't see her mouth in the mess of the whiskers. But she didn't ask me what I was doing, and she didn't tell me to leave. "Watch out," she said. "He sprays." She must have noticed the other animals were gone--I hadn't bothered to try to disguise the open, empty cages and pens--but she just stared at me for a long moment, and then walked up the steps to her trailer. I held my breath, expecting her to call the cops, but instead I heard a radio. Violins. When she sang along, she had a deep baritone voice. I will tell you that, even after all this time, I remember the sound of metal teeth grinding against each other as I opened the tiger's cage. How he rubbed up against me like a house cat before leaping the fence in a single bound. How I could actually taste fear, like almond sponge cake, when I realized I was bound to get caught. Except . . . I didn't. The Bearded Lady never told anyone about me, and the circus roadies who cleaned up elephant dung were blamed instead. Besides, the town was too busy the next morning restoring order and apprehending the loose animals. The elephants were found splashing in the town fountain after knocking down a marble statue of Franklin Pierce. The monkey had made its way into the pie case at the local diner and was devouring a chocolate dream silk torte when he was caught. The dogs were Dumpster diving behind the movie theater, and the horses had scattered. One was found galloping down Main Street. One made its way to a local farmer's pasture to graze with cattle. One traveled over ten miles to a ski hill, where it was spotted by a trauma helicopter. Of the three parrots, two were permanently lost, and one was found roosting in the belfry of the Shantuck Congregational Church. The tiger, of course, was long gone. And that presented a problem, because a renegade parrot is one thing, but a loose carnivore is another. The National Guard was dispersed into the White Mountain National Forest and for three days, schools in New Hampshire stayed closed. Louis came to my house on his bike and told me rumors he'd heard: that the tiger had slaughtered Mr. Wolzman's prize heifer, a toddler, our principal. I didn't like to think about the tiger eating anything at all. I pictured him sleeping high in a tree during the day; and at night, navigating by the stars. Six days after I freed the circus animals, a National Guardsman named Hopper McPhee, who had only joined up a week earlier, found the tiger. The big cat was swimming in the Ammonoosuc River, its face and paws still bloody from feeding on a deer. According to Hopper McPhee, the tiger came flying at him with intent to kill, which is why he had to shoot. I doubt that highly. The tiger was probably half asleep after a meal like that, and certainly not hungry. I do, however, believe that the tiger rushed Hopper McPhee. Because like I said, nobody gives animals enough credit. And as soon as that tiger saw a gun pointed at him, he would have understood. That he was going to have to give up the night sky. That he'd be imprisoned again. So, that tiger? He made a choice. If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf. --Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet premier, quoted in Observer, London, September 26, 1971 © 2012 Jodi Picoult Excerpted from Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.