Lone Wolf is about a divorced family. It's told in four different voices, which is another literary technique that Picoult uses in nearly all, if not all of her novels. The four main characters are Luke and Georgie, divorced parents and their children, Edward and Cara. Luke is a caretaker for wolves. Georgie left for a variety of reasons, one being that she knew Luke would never love her as much or as fiercely as he loved his wolves.
The story starts with a car accident. Luke and Cara, who is living with him and a teenager, are in a crash and Luke suffers from severe brain trauma and is in a coma. Cara comes out relatively unscathed physically, except for a broken arm. Georgie is called to the hospital and makes the decision to call Edward, her eldest son who ran away years before and has been living in Thailand. We get the sense that something happened, primarily between Edward and Luke but it's unclear what exactly.
Edward comes home, for the first time in five or so years and he and Cara are faced with the decision, as the only living relatives of Luke over whether to take Luke off life support. They are deeply divided on this issue. Edward would like to take Luke off as he can't stand the suffering and Cara wants to do anything she can to keep her father alive. Each claim that they know best.
The book waffles between the points of view of all the characters. In the scenes narrated by Luke, we learn about his fascination with wolves and how he has put his life and the lives of his family aside in order to learn more about them. He spent a year living in the Canadian wilderness right before the time that he and Edward had the fight that would separate their family. When he made the decision to go into the wilderness and try to become part of a wolf pack, he did not think he would make it out of there alive.
The other three perspectives are from Georgie, Edward and Cara and the present time. Additionally, Georgie's new husband, a lawyer, plays a role in the narrative as well as he represents Edward against Cara. I would imagine that this kind of family struggle is very personal and would be very different for each family and for each individual within a family. Could I make the decision to take another person off life support? I honestly don't know. I know that I can make that choice for myself and that if there were truly no way for me to make a meaningful recovery then I would want to be taken off life support so that my family and loved ones can work through the grief without constantly being reminded of my inabilities.
On the same token, I hope that everyone has the conversation with their loved ones prior to anything drastic happening, as we can see in numerous cases around the country that this is an issue that really does divide families and create greater pain and torment.
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