The Book of Two Ways: A Novel

An Amazon Best Book of September 2020: How many of us have looked back on a decision that changed our lives and wondered: what if we had made a different choice? Picoult’s novel The Book of Two Ways digs into this very question and the result is incredibly thought-provoking. Dawn Edelstein was once a young grad student working on a dig in Egypt, in love with a fellow Egyptologist, and getting ever closer to proving a radical new theory about ancient Egyptians’ burial rituals for the road to the afterlife. Then a phone call from home changed everything. Fifteen years later, Dawn is married, with a teenage daughter, and working in Boston as a death doula, helping the dying prepare to leave this world in the best way possible. When Dawn has a near-death experience she is confronted with the question of whether the good life she has could have been a great one. Dawn doesn’t just ponder the question—she returns to Egypt, and the man she once loved, to see if she can find the answer. Picoult incorporates fascinating details about Egyptology into her novel—the title comes from an ancient Egyptian tome of the same name—bringing history and a universal connection into the story. The Book of Two Ways is a provocative exploration into monumental questions: about the life we are living, who we want to be with when we die, and whether it’s possible—and acceptable—to change our mind, return to the trailhead, and go another way. —Seira Wilson, Amazon Book Review “A thrilling adventurexa0.xa0.xa0. With Picoult’s stories, there is always something new to learn, and The Book of Two Ways is no exception.xa0.xa0.xa0. A fun and interesting read, one that will lead readers to both learn a lot and also ask themselves key questions about how to create happy lives for themselves during the short time we have on earth.” —Associated Press “ The Book of Two Ways is a return for Picoult to the themes of her earliest books—motherhood, complicated romantic love.xa0.xa0.xa0. Picoult, at this point in her career, could skillfully build tension in a broom closet, but the best part of this book is not the suspense; it’s the look at the complexity of a woman as she enters middle age.xa0.xa0.xa0. Picoult always tells both sides of a story not with judgment, but with grace.” — The Washington Post “Jodi Picoult fans rejoice!xa0.xa0.xa0. The Book of Two Ways is one story you won’t be able to put down.” —CNN “Asking life or death questions in perfect Picoult fashion.” — Parade “[A] delightfully escapist, high-concept novelxa0.xa0.xa0. The Book of Two Ways nearly spills over in its earnestness and emotion. .xa0.xa0. This is a book of big, burning questions such as what defines a great life.” —BookTrib “Picoult’s fans will appreciate this multifaceted, high-concept work.” — Publishers Weekly “Picoult’s fans will be more than ready for this puzzle of a novel.xa0.xa0.xa0. [They] will find heady themes to consider.” — Booklist “Jodi Picoult knows how to write allll the feels, and The Book of Two Ways is no exception.” — Cosmopolitan “Unputdownable.”— E! Online “Riveting.” —Womendotcom “If you didn’t already see Jodi’s name and preorder this one, let us convince you.”— Good Housekeeping Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-four novels, including A Spark of Light , Small Great Things , Leaving Time , The Storyteller , Lone Wolf , Sing You Home , House Rules , Handle with Care , Change of Heart , Nineteen Minutes , and My Sister’s Keeper . She is also the author, with daughter Samantha van Leer, of two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page . Picoult lives in New Hampshire. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Prologue My calendar is full of dead people.xa0 When my phone alarm chimes, I fish it out from the pocket of my cargo pants. I’ve forgotten, with the time change, to turn off the reminder. I’m still groggy with sleep, but I open the date and read the names: Iris Vale. Eun Ae Kim. Alan Rosenfeldt. Marlon Jensen .xa0 I close my eyes, and do what I do every day at this moment: I remember them.xa0 Iris, who had died tiny and birdlike, had once driven a getaway car for a man she loved who’d robbed a bank. Eun Ae, who had been a doctor in Korea, but couldn’t practice in the United States. Alan had proudly showed me the urn he bought for his cremated remains and then joked, I haven’t tried it on yet . Marlon had changed out all the toilets in his house and put in new flooring and cleaned the gutters; he bought graduation gifts for his two children and hid them away. He took his twelve-year-old daughter to a hotel ballroom and waltzed with her while I filmed it on his phone, so that the day she got married there would be video of her dancing with her father.xa0 At one point, they were my clients. Now, they’re my stories to keep.xa0 Everyone in my row is asleep. I slip my phone back into my pocket and carefully crawl over the woman to my right without disturbing her—air traveler’s yoga—to make my way to the bathroom in the rear of the plane. There I blow my nose and look in the mirror. I’m at the age where that’s a surprise, where I still think I’m going to see a younger woman rather than the one who blinks backxa0at me. Lines fan from the corners of my eyes, like the creases of a familiar map. If I untangle the braid that lies over my left shoulder, these terrible fluorescent lights would pick up those first gray strands in my hair. I’m wearing baggy pants with an elastic waist, like every other sensible nearly-forty woman who knows she’s going to be on a plane for a long-haul flight. I grab a handful of tissues and open the door, intent on heading back to my seat, but the little galley area is packed with flight attendants. They are knotted together like a frown.xa0 They stop talking when I appear. “Ma’am,” one of them says, “could you please take your seat?”xa0It strikes me that their job isn’t really very different from mine. If you’re on a plane, you’re not where you started, and you’re not where you’re going. You’re caught in between. A flight attendant is the guide who helps you navigate that passage smoothly. As a death doula, I do the same thing, but the journey is from life to death, and at the end, you don’t disembark with two hundred other travelers. You go alone.xa0I climb back over the sleeping woman in the aisle seat and buckle my seatbelt just as the overhead lights blaze and the cabin comes alive.xa0“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice announces, “we have just been informed by the captain that we’re going to have a planned emergency. Please listen to the flight attendants and follow their directions.”xa0I am frozen. Planned emergency . The oxymoron sticks in my mind.xa0There is a quick rush of sound—shock rolls through the cabin—but no screams, no loud cries. Even the baby behind me, who shrieked for the first two hours of the flight, is silent. “We’re crashing,” the woman on the aisle whispers. “Oh my God, we’re crashing.”She must be wrong; there hasn’t even been turbulence. Everything has been normal. But then the flight attendants station themselves in the aisles, performing a strange, staccato ballet of safety movements as instructions are read over the speakers. Fasten your seatbelts. When you hear the word brace, assume the brace position. After the plane comes to a complete stop you’ll hear Release your seatbelts . Get out. Leave everything behind. Leave everything behind. For someone who makes a living through death, I haven’t given a lot of thought to my own.xa0I have heard that when you are about to die, your life flashes before your eyes.xa0But I do not picture my husband, Brian, his sweater streaked with inevitable chalk dust from the old-school blackboards in his physics lab. Or Meret, as a little girl, asking me to check for monsters under the bed. I do not envision my mother, not like she was at the end or before that, when Kieran and I were young.xa0Instead, I see him. As clearly as if it were yesterday, I imagine Wyatt in the middle of the Egyptian desert, the sun beating down on his hat, his neck ringed with dirt from the constant wind, his teeth a flash of lightning. A man who hasn’t been part of my life for fifteen years. A place I left behind.xa0A dissertation I never finished.xa0Ancient Egyptians believed that to get to the afterlife, they had to be deemed innocent in the Judgment Hall. Their hearts were weighed against the feather of Ma’at, of truth.xa0I am not so sure my heart will pass.xa0The woman to my right is softly praying in Spanish. I fumble for my phone, thinking to turn it on, to send a message, even though I know there is no signal, but I can’t seem to open the button on my pants pocket. A hand catches mine and squeezes.I look down at our fists, squeezed so tight a secret couldn’t slip between our palms. Brace , the flight attendants yell. Brace! As we fall out of the sky, I wonder who will remember me. Much later I would learn that when a plane crashes and the emergency personnel show up, the flight attendants tell them how manyxa0souls were on board. Souls, not people. As if they know our bodies are only passing through for a little while.xa0 I would learn that one of the fuel filters became clogged midflight. That the second filter-clogging light came on in the cockpit forty-five minutes out, and in spite of what the pilots tried, they could not clear it, and they realized they’d have to do a land evacuation. I would learn that the plane came in short of Raleigh-Durham, sticking down in the football field of a private school. As it hit the bleachers with a wing, the plane tipped, rolled, broke into pieces.xa0Much later I would learn of the family with the baby behind me, whose row of three seats separated from the floor and was thrown free from the aircraft, killing them instantaneously. I would hear about the six others who had been crushed as the metal buckled; the flight attendant who never came out of her coma. I would read the names of the passengers in the last ten rows who hadn’t gotten out of the broken fuselage before it erupted in flame.xa0I would learn that I was one of thirty-six people who walked away from the crash.xa0When I step out of the examination room of the hospital we’ve been taken to, I’m dazed. A woman in a uniform is in the hallway, talking to a man with a bandaged arm. She is part of an emergency response team from the airline that has overseen medical checks by physicians, given us clean clothes and food, and flown in frantic family members.xa0“Ms. Edelstein?” she says, and I blink, until I realize she is talking to me.xa0A million years ago, I had been Dawn McDowell. I’d published under that name. But my passport and license read Edelstein. Like Brian’s.xa0In her hand she has a checklist of crash survivors.xa0She puts a tick next to my name. “Have you been seen by a doctor?”xa0“Not yet.” I glance back at the examination room.xa0“Okay. I’m sure you have some questions . . . ?”xa0That’s an understatement. Why am I alive, when others aren’t? Why did I book this particular flight? What if I’d been detained checking in, and had missed it? What if I’d made any of a thousand other choices that would have ledxa0me far away from this crash? At that, I think of Brian, and his theory of the multiverse. Somewhere, in a parallel timeline, there is another me at my own funeral. At the same time, I think—again, always—of Wyatt. I have to get out of here. I don’t realize I have said this out loud until the airline representative responds. “Once we get the doctor’s paperwork, you’re clear to leave. Is someone coming for you, or do you need us to make travel arrangements?”We, the lucky ones, have been told we can have a plane ticket anywhere we need to go—to our destination, back to where the flight originated, even somewhere else, if necessary. I have already called my husband. Brian offered to come get me, but I told him not to. I didn’t say why. I clear my throat. “I have to book a flight,” I say.“Absolutely.” The woman nods. “Where do you need to go?” Boston, I think. Home. But there’s something about the way she phrases the question: need, instead of want; and another destination rises like steam in my mind.I open my mouth, and I answer. Read more