Dear Edward (2020)
By Anne Napolitano
Dial Press, 352 pages.
★★★
Dear Edward isn’t the most complex novel on the market, but its story is very affecting. Its namesake hero (of sorts) is Edward Adler, a 12-year-old boy who boards an airplane bound from Newark to Los Angeles with his parents, Bruce and Jane, and his older brother, 15-year-old Jordan, whom Edward admires.
The boys have been homeschooled by their father, who didn’t get tenure at Columbia, which means mom, a writer for the TV show Law and Order is the main breadwinner. They don’t really want to leave New York, but are West Coast bound because Jane has been offered a ridiculous amount of money to write for Hollywood. Alas, their plane crashes in Colorado and 191 people are killed; Edward is the only survivor and no one can quite figure out how that happened. At 12, he is bears two heavy burdens, the loss of his family and the tag “Miracle Boy.”
Napolitano’s organization is one of flip-flopping chapters in which she does in-flight observations through Edward’s eyes, followed by post-crash ones in which Edward tries to adjust to a new life with his aunt Lacey, age 39, and his uncle John Curtis, 42. They tried unsuccessfully to have children and are now raising Edward in a suburban New Jersey town. Needless to say, Edward has plenty of healing to do, both physically and psychologically. Food has lost its allure and he can’t sleep in the Curtis home and begins to do so next door, in a home populated by Besa, a single Latina mom, and her daughter Shay, who is quirky enough to become Edward’s only real friend.
Napolitano via Edward does a nice job of providing backstories of some of those who perished: slightly pudgy Linda, on her way to move in with the Mr. Right she’s finally found; Veronica, a beautiful flight attendant; egotistical bond trader Mark; Florida, a large and flamboyant Filipino woman who believes in past lives; the wealthy but unhealthy Crispin; wounded Army officer Benjamin, who is also gay; and others. They haunt Edward, as do memories of his parents and Jordan. Edward even wears Jordan’s oversized clothes, which doesn’t help him adjust to junior high school, where some of the kids think he’s a curiosity item, others a freak, and still others privileged, as they know the airline has put a million dollars in escrow for him. Shay, Besa, a plant-loving principal, an offbeat therapist, and the Curtises try to help Edward move from grief to healing.
A few years pass before Edward and Shay discover bags in the garage containing letters from friends and relatives of those who perished. As if Eddie needed one more thing to shoulder, these are full of requests to honor the memories of the lost by becoming what they would have had their lives not been cut short. So how does a teenaged boy become a photographer, a philosopher, a poet, a paramedic, a civil rights activist, travel to Alabama to hug a bedridden mother, and walk the Great Wall of China? With Shay’s help, Edward tries to decide which letters to answer and which are best left alone. Harder still, how does Edward decide who he is and what he wants to be? How does one get beyond being the Miracle Boy?
Dear Edward is heartbreaking, mostly in good ways, though Napolitano does sometimes trip over sentimentality. One might also accuse the author of being manipulative by making a 12-year-old the crash survivor. Would our emotions have been aroused the same way if Mark had survived? Likewise, as suggested, the novel’s structure is mechanistic. The airplane chapters are a time signature countdown, but since we know things don’t end well, the drama is removed and only the horror remains. Some readers might also find the book’s big revelation improbable and its resolution forced. Napolitano’s strength lies with character development, though, and it’s hard not to root for Edward. I’d put Dear Edward in the breezy read category. It’s just weighty enough that you need not feel guilty as you zoom through it. I would, however, recommend not reading it the next time you fly.a
Rob Weir
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