It takes two

The Book of Two Ways Jodi Picoult Ballantine

In the mood to contemplate your own mortality?

The Book of Two Ways follows Dawn Edelstein, a former Yale Egyptology student turned death doula. In Dawn's orbit there's a whole lot of death, starting with Win, the dying woman she's caring for, the memories of those Dawn has lost and the very deceased (as in mummified in Middle Egypt 4,000 years ago).

Readers don't pick up Jodi Picoult for the LOLS, but for the heart-wrenching moral choices, the complicated family dynamics, the deep dive into ethical issues and, lately, the non-linear plots. Picoult's last book, A Spark of Light, told the story backward. The Book of Two Ways presents two possible timelines and settings: Land/egypt and Water/boston. This is a homage to an ancient Egyptian coffin text also called The Book of Two Ways, which contains one of the first known maps of the underworld. Ancient Egyptians believed one could get to the afterlife either by land or water. In Picoult's book, two timelines occur at once.

When we're introduced to Dawn, she boards a plane that “falls out of the sky.” During the descent, Dawn contemplates: “Ancient Egyptians believed that to get to the afterlife, they had to be deemed innocent in the Judgement Hall. Their hearts were weighed against the feather of Ma'at, of truth.”

She's not sure her heart will pass the test. She's thinking not of her steady professor husband, Brian, but of Wyatt, a British Egyptologist whom she hasn't seen in 15 years. That's when her path breaks into two.

In one, Dawn is a brilliant graduate student at Yale, at a dig with Wyatt. But a dying mother propels her home and changes her path, to Brian and marriage and baby.

When the airline offers crash survivors a plane ticket, Dawn asks not for a one-way home, but a ticket to Cairo, knowing Wyatt is in Egypt, still digging, making a name for himself.

Some readers may find the ambiguity frustrating, others may enjoy trying to figure out Dawn's path.

Her protagonist has a chance of both options, reminding fans that Picoult always tells two sides of a story not with judgment, but with grace.