Books: Dear Edward

“Don’t read Dear Edward on a plane!” a friend warned me. But I’d packed four books for my weeklong trip to Colombia and I’d finished the other three by the time we headed to the airport to go home. So I opened it once I’d checked in and gone through security … and I put it down reluctantly only when I had to.

People who know me know I lost my friend Miriam Wolfe in the 1988 bombing of the commercial airliner Pan Am flight 103. And once I’d processed and accepted her death, I discovered I’m not at all afraid to fly. So reading this entire book in one day as I flew across political borders and a massive body of water and changed planes in a cavernous international airport was concerning only in the fact that I occasionally had to stop to tend to other things on my journey.

I’m saying all of this—if you didn’t already know—because Dear Edward is about a massive commercial plane crash and the recovery journey of its sole survivor, a young boy. And if you can compartmentalize the occurrence of the crash—which author Ann Napolitano describes in almost abstract, clinical imagery because the horror and destruction are obviously part of the narrative but absolutely far from the point—you’ll find a beautifully emotional story about Edward Adler (the young survivor), his extended family, his community and literally the entire country sharing common journeys of grief, healing, support, understanding, magnanimity and ultimately joy.

Napolitano crafts the story in two alternating narratives: the interactions of the passengers and crew before and during the flight, and the interactions of Edward and his slowly expanding world in the days, months and years after the crash.

It’s a smart, effective structure for introducing readers to a number of passengers in small bits of narrative that are memorable and emotionally engaging without being overwhelming. And it works equally well for narrating the early weeks and months of Edward’s recovery, letting readers break through his fogs and reach his new understandings alongside him.

Napolitano has a gift for creating characters both on and off the plane who are archetypal enough to be recognizable and distinctive enough to be singular and memorable. An overwhelmed mother, a lecherous tech bro, a stoic soldier, a delusional romantic, a protective single parent … Napolitano introduces you to these familiar people in small bites and dappled brush strokes and gives them just enough unexpected backstory that you gradually come to know and care for them and become invested in the futures you know—and sometimes don’t know—they have.

And then there’s Edward. He’s a somewhat reserved pre-teen whose entire world is taken from him in an instant … right at the age when he’s already emotionally scattered and filled with insecurities, wonders and growing self-awareness. In lesser hands he could just come off as a mess, but Napolitano takes his hand and ours and walks us together through his anguish and sullenness and anger and hopelessness and discoveries of comfort—along with the misfirings in his pubescent brain—in ways that make him understandable, believable and sympathetic, even through his occasional unwise decisions and hostile behaviors.

Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of this novel is its thorough plausibility. It could easily drift into the mists of mysticism and magical thinking, but it stays true to the known world from its biggest plot points to the smallest gestures from the periphery characters.

As I’ve shared book recommendations with people, many have praised everything about Dear Edward and a few have said they could never read something so horrifying and heartbreaking. So Dear Edward might not be for you.

But if you’re even slightly intrigued—and if you’ve noticed that I read the entire novel in one day that included two long flights—I think you’ll be as enamored with it, its humanity, its imperfect emotions, its journeys of discovery and love, and its dogged young protagonist as I am.