Two women form the nucleus of this story: Dr. Annick Swenson and Dr. Marina Singh. Dr. Singh was Dr. Swenson's student in medical school, which Dr. Singh left for a career in pharmacology. She has settled in to a life of research at “big pharma” Vogel, enjoying a discreet relationship with her older boss Mr. Fox, and a friendship with her colleague Anders Eckman.
Anders is sent to the Brazilian jungle to check up on Dr. Swenson, who has been there for years working for Vogel. She feels no urge to make timely reports; she just wants to continue studying the effects of a certain bark which, when chewed regularly, gives women the possibility of conceiving indefinitely. Dr. Swenson and her team haven't told the company that this same bark also renders women immune to malaria; a breakthrough in world health, but unlikely to generate the sort of big bucks that the fertility-boosting properties of the bark would. Suddenly, word reaches Vogel that Anders is dead of fever. Nothing else; no remains, no real information. Marina, filled with misgivings, is sent to the research site to find answers, her quiet life among the test tubes on indefinite hiatus.
Patchett's evocation of the Amazon port city of Manaus and its environs will have the reader dripping sweat and slapping at hard-shelled bugs, biting ants and crawling things with no known names. She makes the jungle jump off the page, and we wonder, along with Marina, why on earth she agreed to this odyssey. What she finds there is more than she bargained for, but she is equal to it. This is Patchett's best effort since The Patron Saint of Liars and, yes, that includes Bel Canto. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.