Lone Wolf
By: Jodi Picoult
Rating <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Summary: On an icy winter night, a terrible accident forces a family divided to come together and make a fateful decision. Cara, once protected by her father, Luke, is tormented by a secret that nobody knows. Her brother, Edward, has secrets of his own. He has kept them hidden, but now they may come to light, and if they do, Cara will be devastated. Their mother, Georgie, was never able to compete with her ex-husband’s obsessions, and now, his fate hangs in the balance and in the hands of her children. With conflicting motivations and emotions, what will this family decide? And will they be able to live with that decision, after the truth has been revealed? What happens when the hope that should sustain a family is the very thing tearing it apart?
Review: Lone Wolf tells the story of Luke and his family from their differing viewpoints. It has five differing narrative character viewpoints that switch from one to the other at different points during the story. The novel centers around an accident that Luke and his daughter Cara has after he picks her up from a friend's house because she is seventeen and has made the unwise choice to go to a teenage party and drink so cannot drive home on her own; on the way home a deer runs in front of their car and Luke is injured badly and sent into a coma where he is considered from then on to be brain dead by doctors and Cara also gets seriously injured.
The storyline after this focuses on the ensuing battle of Cara who wants to keep her Father alive, and her brother Edward who is called back home after six years of living a world away in Thailand, and who comes back to a place he never wanted to return to and since he is legally his Fathers only relative who is of age he says that his Father should be allowed to die in peace and not kept alive by artificial means; The storyline is also filled in with flashbacks of Luke who was not Father of the year material but was someone who lived in the wild with wolves and felt more at home in the woods with them and tried to use their ways and lessons with his own family his narratives include many stories of his living with wild wolf packs in Canada and in captivity. (There are also two other character narratives in the book Luke's ex wife and her new husband but to find out more I suggest reading this great book)
This novel captivated me because you could see all the research that must've gone into writing it; and the detail was amazing, I literally sat down and read it in one night; I found it fascinating partly because my aunt does love wolves herself so this is a particular animal that I have a profound respect for. Also this is an issue that I think should be treated with respect and I think Picoult did a very good job with the topic and with how the characters developed throughout the book. I liked the ending it was not stereotypical or like the end of a lifetime or hallmark movie at all and I appreciated that. It kept my attention; and the characters relationships with one another were very relatable and realistic especially the brother-sister relationship shown between Cara and Luke; being a younger sister I related to moments described between her and Edward.
This is a wonderful read; I will continue reading Picoult and would recommend this book to anyone =) Its one of my new favorites.
Liz
