NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
From the #1 bestselling author of A Spark of Light and Small Great Things, a riveting novel about the choices that change the course of our lives.
Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She's on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: prepare for a crash landing. As thoughts flash through her mind, Dawn braces herself for impact. The shocking thing is the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years earlier.
Miraculously, Dawn survives the crash, but so do all the doubts she suddenly feels. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, she has her husband, Brian, her beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula who helps to ease the transition between life and death for her clients. But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a job she once studied for, but was forced to abandon. Now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the life choices she once made.
After the crash, once they've been checked out by a doctor, the airline offers the passengers flights to a destination of their choice. The obvious thing for Dawn is to fly home, to her work, to her family. The other option that occurs to her, though, is to travel to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways--the first known map of the afterlife.
As the story unfolds, Dawn's two futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts she's kept buried. And then there are the questions she's never truly asked: What does a well-lived life look like? When we leave the earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices or do our choices make us? And, who would you be, if you hadn't turned into the person you are right now?
Mapping the Past
"A bit of a more challenging read (as Jodi Picoult books go) due to the in-depth lessons in Egyptology, but very engaging in its exploration of the ""What if?""s of life's paths-not-taken, and relationships abandoned."
