The conflict allows Picoult to explore the family dynamics, including Warren's relationship with his ex-wife Georgie, Edward and Cara's mother.

Luke's estranged son Edward returns from a self-imposed exile in Thailand to decide whether or not to pull the plug, despite his sister Cara's fierce desire to keep her father alive. He is being kept alive in a vegetative state by a ventilator. Lone Wolf begins with an accident that leaves Luke with a traumatic injury. Instead, the tension is built by the plot device Picoult uses to return to themes she has explored in previous books, including Mercy and My Sister's Keeper: the life or death decisions one family member must make on behalf of another. (That adventure is recounted in a series of flashbacks told from Luke's perspective). The tension in Picoult's novel, however, comes not from the suspense of seeing if the wolves will accept or reject Luke, with potentially deadly consequences. She thanks him for allowing her to borrow “bits and pieces from his incredible life.” In fact, she seems to have based Luke almost entirely on Ellis, down to his physical description and the setting where the character lives: a nature/amusement park, complete with animatronic dinosaurs. In the forward to Lone Wolf, Picoult writes that she was already planning a story around wolves when she came across Ellis. Ellis is the author of The Man Who Lives With Wolves (HarperCollins), his description of the two years he says he spent integrating himself into a wolf pack in the Rocky Mountains. Lone Wolf is built around the actual account of a British researcher/animal behaviourist named Shaun Ellis. But as with her previous novels, Picoult has done her research.

Although the experience adds invaluable details to the world's knowledge about wolves, it rips apart Luke's marriage and damages his relationship with his two children. So great is Luke's commitment to - or obsession with - wolves that he even spends two years living with a pack of wild wolves in the “Canadian wilderness.” The wolves adopt him, feed him and protect him from other predators.

The lone wolf of the title is Luke Warren, a famous biologist who has spent his life studying wolves by insinuating himself into captive packs. Jodi Picoult's ripped-from-the-headlines novels are compulsively readable.

Jodi picoult lone wolf summary