State of Wonder

In Ann Patchett's State of Wonder (#118) the situation is as murky as the waters of the Rio Negro deep in the Amazon jungle, the seetting of much of the novel.  Snakes, jungles, insects, mysterious Indian tribes, cannibals, new botanical discoveries - State of Wonder includes them all. 

Dr. Marina Singh is content working as a pharmacologist for the Vogel phamaceutical company in Minnesota.  That is until the day the company CEO, Mr. Fox, arrives at her office door to tell her that her office mate, Anders Eckman, has died from a fever while visiting Dr. Annick Swenson in her remote Amazonian lab.  His mission had been to see what progress Dr. Swenson has made in developing what could be an extremely lucrative new drug for Vogel.  Dr. Swenson's terse letter has given no further information than that Dr. Eckman has been buried.  Mr. Fox wants Marina to help him break the news to Ander's wife.  From that point, it's only a matter of weeks before Marina finds herself on a plane to Manaus, Brazil, to dig out the details of exactly what happened to Anders, and where, precisely, Dr. Swenson, her distinguished Johns Hopkins medical school teacher, is with the research for Vogel's new mystery drug. 

How is Marina to get in touch with Dr. Swenson who refuses to use a satellite phone or e-mail and who has her own gate keepers working for her in Manaus?  When contact is finally made, Marina finds that the jungle lab is not at all what she expected, nor is the exact nature of Dr. Swenson's research.  And no one can tell her what has happened to Anders Eckman's body...

The reader, like Marina, is left with the feeling that the answers are there, just out of reach beyond the next bend of the river or turn of the page.  They are the answers you necessarily anticipated, but at the end of the adventure, it's a relief to leave the jungle behind...