51 pages • 1 hour read
Jodi PicoultThe Book of Two Ways
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Land/Egypt”
Dawn is jealous of Anya Dailey, who seems to be a perfect match for Wyatt—she is a wealthy member of the British aristocracy, with a family legacy in Egyptology. Anya and Wyatt began as business partners when Anya agreed to fund Wyatt’s work, and then their relationship became more personal. When he takes Anya to the dig site, he brings Dawn and another team member along. Dawn goes down into the chamber first to prove to Anya that the ladder will hold. Anya asks Dawn to take pictures of her and Wyatt, and Dawn snaps at her when she shows her ignorance of the field.
Dawn is upset. Wyatt confronts her with the fact that she has no right to be, as she is married. In addition, she is the one who disappeared and broke their relationship. He offers to tell Anya everything even though he will lose his funding, but Dawn says no.
That night, she drinks Wyatt’s most expensive bottle of cognac. She asks Wyatt’s student Alberto why he has been so cold to her. He tells her that, from the moment she arrived, he could tell that the project and its funding would be affected by her presence. He asks why she is there, if she knows that she will hurt Wyatt again. She tells him that she came for herself. When she returns to Wyatt’s room, she sees that Wyatt has left her a hieroglyphic message on limestone, as he had done when they were students.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Water/Boston”
Lately, Dawn spends most of her time with Win, who is writing her letter to Thane. She is not at home very much, often returning after Brian and Meret are already asleep, and finds herself pulling further away from Brian. She meets Kieran for lunch one day and to help him pick out a suit for a presentation. While in the store, she catches an aroma that reminds her of Wyatt, and gets upset. She tells Kieran that she thinks she made a mistake. He thinks she is talking about finding Wyatt online, but she is referring to her choice of leaving Wyatt and Egyptology behind.
Win finishes her letter and asks Dawn to deliver it immediately. This means, as Dawn points out, that she may be gone when Win dies, but Win persists, and Dawn agrees. She packs that day to leave for London. Brian is afraid that if she goes to London, she will not return, but she refuses to wait. During their conversation, Meret enters the room, holding the results of a DNA test that Brian had given her as a birthday gift. It states that she is nearly 100% British and Irish, which is odd because Brian’s family has Polish ancestry. Dawn realizes that Meret is Wyatt’s child.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Land/Egypt”
Alberto drives Anya Dailey to the airport in Cairo, and Wyatt asks Dawn to go for a drive so that they can talk. They go to another necropolis, Amarna. Wyatt says that he didn’t tell Anya about their relationship; he wanted to talk to Dawn first and ask her to stay. Dawn realizes that she cannot leave Wyatt again, but cannot imagine leaving Meret behind. She tells Wyatt this, and uses the opportunity to finally tell him that Meret is his daughter.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Water/Boston”
Upon realizing the truth about Meret’s father, Dawn escapes to the bathroom to process. She realizes that her constant illness in the weeks after she left Egypt, which she had attributed to stress and grief, was actually due to her pregnancy. Brian comes into the bathroom after calming Meret down by convincing her of the test’s flaws. He is angry, and asks why Dawn did not tell him, and she replies that she did not know. Yet she wonders to herself if, somewhere inside, she did know. Brian now believes that she married him because she was pregnant, even though she denies it. He is angry with her, but still wholeheartedly Meret’s father.
Dawn realizes that Brian is a better parent for Meret right now and leaves, without telling anyone, to fly to London. She remembers how Brian missed Meret’s birthday party because he was helping Gita, and she left the house without telling him. She had returned when Meret texted her, but is not sure she would have otherwise—she was on her way to the airport when she received the message.
After arriving in London, Dawn finds Thane’s house. She watches his wife and children through the window as they prepare dinner, and briefly meets Thane as he returns home. After seeing him with his family, Dawn realizes that she cannot give Win’s letter to Thane, only to hurt his family the way she has hurt her own. Instead of flying back to Boston, she changes her ticket to Cairo.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
These later chapters are much shorter than the previous, reflecting the story’s increasing tension and momentum. By moving from one thread to the other so rapidly, Picoult builds toward the moment when these two threads will collide.
In Chapter 9, Dawn is faced with the reality that Wyatt’s life has moved forward in her absence. He is engaged to a woman who, on the surface, appears perfect for him. Even so, Picoult emphasizes the rightness of Dawn and Wyatt’s relationship. Alberto, who dislikes Dawn because of her potential to destroy their relationship with their donor, says: “I see the way you look at each other—not like you want to get under each other’s clothes, but like you want to get under each other’s skin” (318). He points out that if Dawn intends to return to her family, she will hurt Wyatt again, the same way she did the first time so many years ago.
Dawn and Win, in Chapter 10, continue to develop their relationship. Picoult transcribes Win’s letter into the chapter, and uses it to explore the theme of Living With Death. Dawn also continues to become more thoughtful about her relationship with Wyatt, her passion for Egyptology, and all that she left behind 15 years ago. When she is struck by an aroma that takes her back to Wyatt and Egypt, she is forced to confront the feelings that have been roiling her for some time, and which increased after she looked Wyatt up online. She is beginning to understand that she cannot just ignore the past and move forward with Brian. Her sense that she has missed something, that she can’t unsee “what [her] life might have been” (326), is becoming increasingly urgent. This urgency collides with the results of Meret’s DNA test. Dawn’s two lives have finally touched, and in a way that cannot be denied or undone.
Dawn takes the opportunity to escape. Picoult makes it clear that Dawn is going to reexamine her past life and relationship with Wyatt. Dawn also feels the urgent need to tell Wyatt that Meret is his daughter. Dawn has discovered that she will have to face her past and the results of her choices if she is to find happiness in the future.
This is also the point in the narrative where the end of the Water/Boston thread connects to the beginning of the Land/Egypt thread. Picoult uses specific details from Chapter 1, when Dawn lands in Cairo, to signal that this is the same scene. She includes memorable moments to remind the reader, such as when Dawn’s taxi driver says: “Welcome to Alaska!” (348). The sliding door structure that Picoult seemed to have been using is revealed to be, instead, one designed to highlight the idea of alternate lives—Dawn has meaning in both her life with Meret and Brian and in her previous one with Wyatt. This revelation, so late in the novel, changes the reader’s perspective of everything that happens in the Land/Egypt chapters. Although Dawn has, throughout those chapters, always insisted she was in Egypt to discover more about herself, it is more complicated. While an important part of her trip was to find out if she had made the wrong choice 15 years ago, an equally important part is to tell Wyatt that they have a daughter together. This revelation adds new meaning, and deepens Dawn’s struggle.
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