Best-selling author Jodi Picoult spoke with a man who ate raw meat and howled with wolves for a year while doing research for her most recent book.
Picoult spoke at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Wednesday to promote the release of her newest novel, “Lone Wolf,” a book about a brother and sister forced to decide whether or not to take their father off of life support.
Part of the novel is in the voice of the comatose character who, in the book, lived with a pack of wolves.
Picoult told the 400 audience members she based the character’s experiences on the real experiences of Shaun Ellis, a wolf behaviorist who actually did spend a year living with wolves in 2005.
Picoult, who invented a unique character before meeting the behaviorist, said Ellis ate raw meat and eventually lost his emotional ties to the human world when he lived with the wolves.
When she met Ellis, she said, he taught her about the dynamics of wolf packs and about how wild wolves howl.
During the reading, Picoult transferred some of that knowledge to audience members, calling three volunteers to the stage and teaching them how to howl. She taught one woman the Alpha wolf howl, the second the Beta wolf howl and the third a Number wolf howl.
A Beta wolf protects the pact “like a mafia thug,” Picoult said, while the Alpha wolf remains in the back, wary but in charge. The Number wolf does not have a specific job and is just happy to part of the pack, she said.
The novel depicts an “intersection between medical science and moral choices,” according to Picoult’s website.
This kind of controversy, said Boston University College of Arts and Sciences student Becca Antonoplos, draws her into the author’s novels.
“As a writer you don’t want to skirt around the issue,” she said. “She likes to bring that to light and talk about it. She brings both sides [into] all her topics – she does a really good job of not picking sides.”
Picoult has written 18 books since 1992, five of which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, according to her website.
“I’ve read all her books [about] three times each,” Antonoplos said.
Another student said she becomes emotionally invested in the author’s novels.
“I really like how personal [Picoult’s books] are, how you can really get into the characters’ minds. I think she does a really good job with that,” said Rachael DeNoncour, a freshman at Emmanuel College. “You can relate to the characters a lot, even if they don’t have the same problems as you . . . because of the way she develops her characters.”
Readers said Picoult’s inclusion of drama in her stories draws them to her books.
Laura Hickey, a senior at Lesley University, said Picoult’s novels appeal to her because of the storytelling, adding, “Her stories [and] her plotlines are really rich.”
Jenny Hayes, an Emmanuel College sophomore, agreed.
“I really like the courtroom drama and the family drama all mixed in one,” she said. “I think her issues are really current in today’s society.”
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