State of Wonder. This item is unavailable.State of Wonder

Marina Singh is a research scientist at Vogel, a pharmaceutical institute in Minnesota, inconveniently in love with her boss, Mr. Fox . When one of her colleagues is reported to have died while following up on the progress of a field team based in Brazil, Marina is dispatched by Mr. Fox to the Amazon to uncover the truth of his death. And his widow wants his effects. She travels to Manaus, then down into the Amazonian delta, deep into the dense, dark, insect-infested jungle. The research team is looking into the development of a new miracle drug that could revolutionize Western society. A local tribe has the bark of a certain tree, it yields a substance which allows them to conceive late into middle age: many of the women are getting pregnant into their sixties and seventies. The problem is that the team is taking too long: they have been silent for two years, and Marina has been tasked to find out what is holding back their progress. The second problem is more serious: the team is being headed up by the daunting figure of Annick Swenson, an eminent and fiercely uncompromising scientist who was once Marina's colleague, and towards whom Marina has very complicated feelings.

What Marina learns will change her life. In a novel that is packed with amazing twists and surprises, Ann Patchett returns with immense confidence to a broad canvas, teeming with atmosphere and characters and rich with narrative. Remarkable events - fights with anacondas; encounters with cannibals; deaths; re-births - and profound moral decisions come together in a novel that will enthrall her many readers and fans, and is guaranteed to be a major bestseller.

Ann Patchett is the author of five novels: Run, The Patron Saint of Liars, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Taft, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, The Magician's Assistant, and Bel Canto, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize, the Booksense Book of the Year Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her nonfiction book Truth & Beauty was a New York Times bestseller. Patchett has written for many publications, including Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, Gourmet, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and the Washington Post. She lives in Nashville, TN.