Finished: State of Wonder (Patchett). A wonderful book given to me by a dear friend, Leslie! I really enjoyed it. :-) Not a book I had sought out myself, I wasn't at all sure what to expect...and I was so pleasantly surprised. The story of 42 year old Dr. Marina Singh, a doctor of pharmacology who has spent the past fifteen years working in Minnesota is thrust into the world of the Amazon when her close colleague goes missing on a company trip there. Describing it that way doesn't begin to touch on the emotion of Marina's story, or of the Lakashi tribe she is forced to become accustomed to, or the richness of all the other characters, not to mention the environment of the Amazon itself.

Years before, Marina was an incredibly smart doctor, and was in her fourth year of her gynecological/obstetrics residency at Johns Hopkins when a horrific accident happened. After monitoring a young mother on her third childbirth, whose baby was apparently presenting breech, and whose fetal heart beat was completely erratic, Marina opted to do a C-section after repeatedly trying to get in touch with her attending physician with no luck. Unfortunately, in her hurry, as she sliced through the uterine wall, she sliced the baby who was in fact breech, but also face up! She sliced right down his face and through one eye, blinding him. Though not fired from the hospital, she herself couldn't live with the consequences so she switched to pharmaceuticals and the study of cholesterol.

As the story opens, Dr. Marina Singh is happy to have been in Minnesota, working at the Vogel pharmaceutical company. She has been partnered with Anders Eckman, a happily married father of three young boys, for the past seven years. Marina, herself, is in a secret relationship with her boss, and the president of Vogel, Mr. Fox. Vogel's huge investment at the moment happens to be in research being conducted in the Amazon by Dr. Annick Swenson. Dr. Swenson just happens to be the no-nonsense, tough as nails doctor who was Marina's attending physician all those years ago at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Swenson has spent the past two years of Vogel's time and money researching the Lakashi tribe in hopes of developing a pill that will prolong, or bring back in some instances, the fertility in women. Vogel and Mr. Fox both see the potential in the monetary value of the drug to millions of women who want to have children later, or to those who can't afford the expensive invitro methods now available. The Lakashi tribe is unique in that their women remain of childbearing capability even into their seventies. The problem is....Mr. Fox hasn't heard from Dr. Swenson with any reports of her progress in over two years. Oh, she's alive and well...he knows that. She just doesn't want to be bothered with the questions, the paper work and the bureaucracy of it all. So, Mr. Fox sends Anders Eckman down to scope out the progress and come back with a report. After being gone for two months and with limited communication, a rudimentary letter is finally sent from Dr. Swenson to Mr. Fox informing him that Anders Eckman "got fever" and died. Though her letter is succinct, she tells Mr. Fox that she made sure Mr. Eckman had a Christian burial.

Marina is stunned and bereaved, but not as much as Anders' wife, Karen. Karen tells Marina that someone must go down there and find out exactly what happened to Anders and see where he is buried at the very least. In the meantime, though he cares very deeply for Marina, Mr. Fox also needs someone to go down and finish the job Anders was to do and bring back reports of the progress of the fertility drug. So...with pressure from both sides, Marina reluctantly agrees to go to the Amazon. Her trip is wrought with all the typical perils...first her luggage, including all her clothing and her phone, is lost. Then, she is stonewalled in the port city of Manaus by the caretakers who work for Dr. Swenson who want to guard her privacy. It takes a few weeks before she can get anyone to listen to her and finally Dr. Swenson herself shows up in Manaus. She's still as abrupt as ever and tries to convince Marina that there's nothing more to tell about the death of Anders, and that though he had been pleasant enough, it had been more of a nuisance to have him there over her shoulder. Dr. Swenson brings along a young native boy, Easter, who is about eleven, who is deaf and who drives her pontoon boat for her. Easter is so endearing and lively and capable and lovable, you just fall in love with him! Anyway, Dr. Swenson can't talk Marina out of going into the depths of the Amazon with her, so she brings her along on the trip back.

The welcoming back of the pontoon boat with Dr. Swenson aboard is an amazing visual of lighted torches by the Lakashi tribe, who all see her as a miracle healer. Marina soon gets to know the tribe, and she shares a small room with Easter. Dr. Swenson tells her that Easter is actually of another, more dangerous, cannibalistic tribe, the Hummocca, who brought him over in a canoe one day eight years before terribly sick in hopes that she could fix him. She claims they abandoned him and she's raised him since. It turns out...Dr. Swenson hasn't just been there for two years. She's been coming down as often as possible for the past fifty years, since she was a young intern herself. She knows the people and the environment very well, and she's now seventy-three years old. Marina sees in her the old, tough instructor, but Dr. Swenson doesn't recognize Marina at first, or so you think. As it turns out, the secret to the prolonged reproductive abilities of the Lakashi women is all in the bark of a certain tree. The women begin gnawing the bark of these trees and sucking their juices when they begin their menstrual cycles and continue their entire lives. Dr. Swenson is close to perfecting the actual drug for it, but there is an even bigger payoff at stake. What she and her very small team of doctors have discovered in their lab there in the jungle is that in addition to the reproductive enhancements, whatever is in the trees has also kept any of the Lakashi women from ever contracting malaria! Dr. Swenson has actually become her own human test subject, as Marina soon discovers that Dr. Swenson is seven months pregnant. Dr. Swenson says that she has realized that even if they could make this drug available world-wide and make Vogel rich...it doesn't take away the fact that she's still seventy-three and the rest of her body and her mind itself are just too old to be bringing a new life into the world. No...the real reason she's been so secretive is the malaria component. They aren't quite to the point of figuring out the right combination to turn THAT part of it into a drug, and they know, or assume, that if Vogel knew that all the money they were pouring into the operation would result more in a third world vaccine that would needed to be provided free to everyone, rather than the coveted reproductive pill they were after, that they would shut the whole operation down. So.....Dr. Swenson doesn't want Marina to report back to her bosses.

In the meantime, Marina has become mesmerized by the Lakashi people, and fallen in love with Easter herself. She can see where he had become close to Anders as Easter has Anders passport, and there is evidence of Anders taking Easter under his wing and teaching him the beginnings of writing. Dr. Swenson, realizing that her childbirth could be complicated, drags Marina along to the birth of one of the native women's difficult deliveries. It turns out...Marina has to perform a C-section with the little rudimentary implements she has. After all has gone well, Dr. Swenson lets her know that she does, in fact, remember the incident in Baltimore all those years ago! She just wanted to throw her back into the ring because she figures she could end up needing a C-section and she wants Dr. Singh to stay around to do it. Meanwhile, Marina has asked everyone more about Anders' death, and they all say that he had a horrible fever that they all thought he would recover, but he died so suddenly. Marina asks to see where he is buried, but Dr. Swenson admits that after he died, she let the Lakashi, who adored Anders, have his body to carry of in the night and bury in their own way. Marina is horrified, but has come to accept more and more of their ways. She writes letters home to Mr. Fox as often as she can, but letters must be carried down river by random people in boats, so she never knows if he receives them. One night, waiting by the river with Easter to see if a boat will come, a big boat with a motor is heard and none other than the caretaker from Manaus is there, along with Mr. Fox! He had not received any of Marina's letters and had come in search of her. He's pretty shocked to see how accustomed she's become to the tribal life, and how she's dressed, etc.

Dr. Swenson is mad that the "company man" from Vogel has come, yet she willingly shows him all the reproductive results...including her own pregnancy! Mr. Fox is ecstatic with the news and agrees to leave the next day and leave Marina there until she can help deliver the baby. He'll report back to the board and things will proceed along. Mr. Fox and Marina don't really get any time alone, and Marina begins to wonder whether he really cared more about the results than her. She doesn't see much of a future anyway because they all lied to him by omission....no one told him that their main goal out of all this has become the vaccine for malaria. She knows that even if she gets back home and they are still together, it won't be for long since he will find out she didn't tell him either. The caretaker, Barbara, from Masau tells Marina how they almost didn't make it there...they went up the wrong tributary off the river and had an encounter with the fierce Hummocca tribe. Arrows were showering down upon them as they quickly turned their boat around to leave. Barbara is crying as she tells Marina of the surreal experience and how she thought she saw her father running to her from the midst of all the Hummocca, screaming something to her. She knows it was her father watching out for her because he's been dead since she was ten. After sending Mr. Fox, etal, back off on the boat the next morning, Dr. Swenson tells Marina that she waited until they were gone to tell her that her baby has died inside her in the past two days. She can tell because she hasn't felt it move, can't hear it with a stethoscope, and she herself has hypertension. Sure enough, Marina does a C-section on Dr. Swenson and delivers a stillborn baby...and one that has the deformity of a mermaid tail, i.e., both legs fused together. Perhaps it isn't best to tamper with nature? Anyway, as Dr. Swenson is recovering, Marina tells her about Barbara's vision of her father. Dr. Swenson nearly sits straight up and says...don't you know what that means? That was no vision....that must have been tall, blond Anders! Maybe he's alive after all! What do you mean he's alive? You said the Lakashi carried off his dead body?? Well...I fudged that a little...in reality, he wandered off in the night one night in his delirium of fever and we figured him for dead when we couldn't find him after a few days.

Marina decides right then and there she must go and confront the Hummocca tribe and try to get Anders back. She takes peanut butter and oranges and Easter to drive the boat. She won't let anyone else go with them. As they manage to finally find their way to the Hummocca's shore, they are showered with arrows. Marina holds up an orange, though, and shouts a form of Lakashi tongue the best she can. She suddenly hears an English voice...it's Anders!! He is there and in the midst of the dangerous Hummocca. They had saved him from his fever, but kept him there with them. He tells Marina that there isn't much hope...they will kill them all. He asks her what she brought to trade and she says oranges and peanut butter. They like the taste of the oranges, and Anders is indicating they want to trade those for him when a female of the tribe starts shrieking and running towards the boat. She has seen Easter and recognizes him as her son!! She makes her way to the boat and confusion ensues. Anders tells Marina they want Easter for him. She says absolutely not, they can't do that. She loves that boy! Anders says, they'll just kill all of us and take him and the boat anyway...we have no choice. Anders comes to the boat and he and Easter have a touching, tearful reunion, but then Anders pries him loose and hands him to the Hummoccan woman. :-( :-( Easter doesn't know what's going on and gives them the most heart-wrenching look. Anders and Marina start the boat and leave him there. It is so, so sad! When they get back to the Lakashi tribe, Marina tells the very upset Dr. Swenson, who considered Easter to be like a son, that the Hummocca's kept Easter. Dr. Swenson then confesses that when they brought him to be healed years ago, that they came back only a week later to get him. She couldn't explain to them that he needed a month's more of medicine, so she just told them he was dead. So, I guess at the expense of Easter, he was returned to his rightful parents. Dr. Swenson seems to think he'll grab a canoe and make his way back, but Marina says you didn't see the look of betrayal on his face. Dr. Swenson wants Marina to stay there and take over for her. She tells her she'll never get this place and the people out of her system now, but Marina is disenchanted with it all now and just wants to get home. She and Anders go home and the last scene is Anders hopping out of the cab and his amazing and sobbing wife and boys seeing him alive.

Such a good book! And, I thank you so much Leslie for passing it along to me! :-)