State Of Wonder by Ann Patchett

When word gets back that Dr. Marina Singh's office mate has died in the jungles of the Amazon, everyone is shocked.  Anders Eckman had gone to make contact with Dr. Swenson who had been investigating a drug for over a decade.  Anders and Marina's company was sponsoring her but reports from the field had been almost nonexistent and the head of the company wonders what he is doing paying her with no idea if she is making any progress.

Dr. Swenson gave almost no details, just a note that said Anders had died from a fever and she had buried him there.  Anders wife is left with three small sons and she wants someone from the company to go find out what has happened and perhaps to bring him home.  Marina knew him best and his wife thinks Marina should be the one to go.  The CIO, who Marina is secretly in a relationship with, also wants Marina to be the one as he trusts her to find out about the drug and if it is a reality.  Marina reluctantly agrees.  She was a former student of Dr. Swenson and does not have positive memories of the experience.

When Marina gets to the Amazon, she spends days trying to find someone who can take her to Dr. Swenson's camp.  When she finally gets there, she is shocked by many things.  The reason for the potential drug is that the local tribe, buried deep in the jungle, has an astonishing characteristic.  The women remain fertile most of their lives, having babies in their sixties and seventies.  If the company can develop a drug that will extend fertility for older women, it will be a breakthrough drug financially.

But Dr. Swenson hasn't changed.  She is still the remote, take no nonsense, never listen to an excuse woman Marina knew decades before.  Swenson is now in her own seventies but hasn't slowed down and feels no compulsion to share her results or even progress with the company funding her.  Marina is lost at first but as the days and weeks go by, adjusts to the very different life she finds.  She still doesn't know much about Ander's end, but makes discoveries about the drug and another hidden secret.  Can Marina successfully complete her mission?

This book feels like a departure for Patchett.  It does have the relationship component most of her novels do, but it is set in a very different landscape and raises several moral questions the reader will ponder.  What do we owe our friends?  What do we owe the companies that employ us?  If a scientific discovery will change the world, is it always right to pursue it in the name of knowledge?  Readers will come to different conclusions but all will find much to like in this novel.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.