Motives Unknown

The heart is the subject of this novel—in particular the heart of Hernan Garcia, a Latin American doctor who ends up in Montreal and becomes the mentor to a local boy named Patrick. While Garcia creates a new life as a grocer, Patrick stocks the shelves and mops the floor, and gradually falls under the spell of this strong and caring man. Patrick comes to love Garcia as a father figure and teacher, while being inducted into a passionate intimacy with the whole Garcia family. He eventually goes to university to become a physician himself, inspired by his idealization of his one-time mentor. He falls in love with Garcia’s daughter, Celia, and they are happy together for a while. Patrick goes into neuroscience and takes his fascination with the brain into the world of business, where he develops a company that uses magnetic resonance imaging technology to study the motivational basis of decision making. But his neural pursuits seem to pale next to his quest for emotional meaning...