Lone Wolf, written by Jodi Picoult, is a book filled with disparate emotions and drama that simply doesn’t let you put it down. The story revolves around a distorted family, under the care of Luke Warren, a key character. He is the caretaker in charge of a wildlife park at New Hampshire where animals are held captive. Despite being a very free-spirited and a nature-loving man, his family suffers detriment and ends up separating.
In spite of this, a calamitous incident in Warren’s life brings them back together. It all starts when he and his daughter Cara meet with an accident. Cara survives the accident with a broken shoulder while Warren unfortunately suffers a severe Brain hemorrhage and goes into a vegetative state. On hearing this, his son Edward who ran away to Thailand six years ago returns to see his father and reunites with his family. Georgie, his mother, divorced from Warren and now married to another man, is delighted to see her son after six years. However, Cara is furious with her brother for having abandoned the family.
Problems start to arise when the doctors see no improvement in Warren’s health and advise his family to give up on any hope of him returning to his regular life. Edward contemplates going through with the termination of his father’s life and insists that they should donate his organs as he thinks his father would have wanted that. On the contrary, Cara, who loves her Father immensely gets enraged when she hears Edward’s decision. The siblings argue with each other over the position of Warren’s Guardian in the courthouse. A fascinating series of events unravel the truth of Warren’s life after he came back from his journey in the forests of Canada as he attempted to be part of a wolf pack. The puzzle of Warren’s life is uncovered as Edward manages to reveal the reason behind his disappearance six years ago that he had tried to keep from his mother and sister, in order to protect them.
The whole story is explained from the perspective of multiple characters. Among these perspectives, Luke Warren’s narration is particularly captivating, as he beautifully brings out the comparison between his family and the wolf packs he spent most of his life with. All in all, this story proves to be a wonderful mix of poignant emotions and engaging family drama coupled with unparalleled storytelling by the author.
