State of Wonder by Anne Patchett

In the interest of full disclosure, I think Ann Patchett is phenomenal. 'The Magician's Assistant' is one of my all time favorite books. 'Run' is one of the best narratives on the paradox of urban landscapes, where extreme poverty and deprivation can exist within blocks of unfathomable wealth. The thing I love about Patchett beyond her skill as a story teller is that there is a second and a third layer to her stories, which keep emerging in your thoughts, bubbling up long after you have closed the book, and 'State of Wonder' is no exception. I am a huge fan. So read on with this in mind.
The book focuses on the person who is a change agent, but not the biggest character. Dr. Marina Singh is a woman with a skeleton or two in her closet, but who is happily working in a lab in Minnesota when her supervisor enlists her aid in finding the elusive Dr. Swenson, who is working with indigenous people in the heart of the Amazon on a potential new drug. He has sent a colleague of hers, Anders, ahead of her, and reports are that he has died. Anders widow encourages Marina to go there and figure out what the whole story is.
And so she goes. She is not a jungle person, and even the journey is arduous and wonderous. It is almost like being dropped into a science fiction story, the atmosphere is so foreign, and Dr. Swenson is so brutally matter-of-fact that Marina is thrown even further off her game. But Dr. Singh has hidden sources of strength, and she is able to stand up for herself, as well as admit to things that need improvment, and in the end she is also very brave. And she realizes that underneath Dr. Swenson's appearance of telling the no-holds-barred truth, she is hiding quite a lot--that it is not the truth she tells but rather the way she would like things to be viewed.
The subtext of the story is one about values--how do we balance the discovery of new medical agents against respect for indigenous people and habitats? We do not have a moral paradigm for this internationally, of course, but the book plumbs some of the readers thoughts, presenting a morally ambiguous situation to make the weighing of the evidence more interesting and challenging. Outstanding piece of fiction.