Friday, June 1, 2012

Review: Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult

In Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult the subjects of death, organ donation, family strife, and unity are all addressed equally well.  Ms. Picoult is never shy about addressing difficult and sticky issues and she does not disappoint in Lone Wolf.  The reader begins with a family divided.  Mom and dad have split.  Dad is a conservationist and researches wolves.  He even goes so far as to infiltrate their packs and live with them.  His exploits go too far though when he goes away for a year to live with wolves in Canada, leaving his wife, son, and daughter to fend for themselves.  Eventually, the wife leaves her husband and divorces him.  Their shared son turns eighteen, has a confrontation with the father, and suddenly leaves and never returns for six years.  This leaves the youngest child living with her mom up until mom remarries and has newborn twins with her new husband.  The daughter feels like a third wheel in this new family her mom has so she goes to live with her conservationist dad.  Only problem is he operates a summer wildlife park where he keeps wolves.  A tragedy occurs and one of the family members winds up on a ventilator and in a vegetative state.  The son returns home for the first time in six years and three family members are faced with the prospect of making a decision for one of their own concerning whether to maintain or terminate life support.  Once again, the family is divided and it is only after a temporary guardian is appointed for the family member in the hospital and a judge's ruling of who to give decision making power to for one of their own that the family unifies enough to make a decision.

This was a difficult read for me.  If you have ever been in the position of having to make a decision regarding a loved one's life or death following a traumatic injury, you will more fully understand the struggle this family has.  You have to reconcile what you think the family member in the vegetative state would have wanted for him/herself in this position, particularly if there is no living will.  You also have to contend with your own feelings and convictions of what constitutes a meaningful life.  I did find it hard to believe that someone like the conservationist dad in this story could actually gain partial custody given some of his research endeavors.  It also made me wonder if someone from the community would not have called social services given the obsessive nature of this dad toward his research.  He is so focused on his wolves that I sometimes felt he had not the first clue as to the health and well-being of his daughter.  The other problem I had with this book is that the son, who is a straight A student and could have had his pick of colleges, just up and decides he is leaving the family and moving half way around the world.  I think, given my experience with students, that it is more likely a student of this caliber would have chosen a college clear across the country in order to not have to interact with dad or associate with his dad as opposed to moving to Thailand.  Why discard your potential career and happiness just because you can't stand your father and think he is a hypocrite? 

The one portion of this book that really made me examine my own life is the struggle the family has with organ donation.  In this book's case, just because a family member in a vegetative state has a driver's license indicating he/she is an organ donor, does not mean that organ donation can or necessarily will happen upon that person's death.  It depends on whether the individual was actually registered and if upon death, the organs can actually be sustained for harvesting.  Sometimes, life doesn't go as planned, and it is not possible for the organs to be utilized for donation.  There is definitely no lack of big issue, thought provoking detail in this book and I would expect no less from author Jodi Picoult.

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