Wish You Were Here is a contemporary novel by Jodi Picoult about a carefully planned life disrupted by crisis, isolation, and an unexpected confrontation with the self. Diana O’Toole is on the edge of a promotion in the art auction world, expecting a proposal from her boyfriend Finn, a surgical resident, and preparing for a trip to the Galápagos Islands when a virus begins spreading through New York City. Finn is called to the hospital, Diana travels alone, and the vacation quickly becomes something very different: closed borders, a missing connection to home, and a fragile bond with a local family who forces her to look again at the future she thought she wanted. Set against the islands associated with Darwin’s theory of evolution, the novel uses the pandemic not only as a background of uncertainty, but as a way to examine choice, ambition, intimacy, and the quiet pressure to become someone else when the life you planned stops making sense.
Author: Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Random House US / Ballantine Books
Publication Year: 2022
Number of Pages: 432