Lone Wolf
A Novel
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?
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Book details:
- Atria/Emily Bestler Books |
- 432 pages |
- ISBN 9781439102749 |
- February 2012
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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...
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Introduction
Six years after he ran away from home, following a disastrous confrontation with his father, Edward Warren is still not ready to face his family. But when he learns that his father and sister have been in a serious car accident, he has no choice. He returns to find that nothing is as he left it. His mother Georgie is remarried with new children, his sister Cara has grown into a self-possessed teen who blames him for their parents’ divorce, and his father Luke, a renowned wolf expert, lies in a coma with little chance of recovery. A decision must be made about Luke’s life—whether to keep him alive or let him go—but Edward and Cara are deeply divided over what their father would want and who should make the decision.
How far will each sibling go to do what he or she thinks is right? How far can the bonds of family be stretched by guilt, anger, and impossible choices? Lone Wolf is a story of the ways a family can both know and misunderstand one another.
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An exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the audio book recording...
Behind the Scenes at the Audio Recording of LONE WOLF
Author Jodi Picoult Reveals Her Favorite TV show
