She butts heads with her old medical professor and at one point battles a huge anaconda. Marina, the lab doc, has her problems living in the jungle. She makes us feel quite at home among the tribe whose women bear children late into life. She gives us the jungle and its flora and fauna, especially its bugs, in all of its fascinating and worrisome reality. So the set-up is slow, but the Amazon setting is something Patchett does rather marvelously. She flies to the Amazonian town of Manaus and eventually heads into the jungly territory of the Amazon. This doctor is an Indian-American named Marina Singh. The company next sends the dead doctor's lab partner, who's also a former medical student of the recalcitrant Dr. Swenson's research sends a company doctor down to ascertain the state of her progress. The big Minnesota drug company sponsoring Dr. Finding the essence of that drug is the goal of research performed deep in the Amazon delta by an elusive physician named Annick Swenson. There's a drug that allows women to become pregnant into their 70s and beyond.

It's the latest novel from Ann Patchett called 'State of Wonder.'ĪLAN CHEUSE: The set-up for Patchett's ultimately quite attractive plot is a bit slow. Now a piece of literary fiction about a medical mystery deep in the Amazonian jungle.

Ann patchett wonder