In Dear Edward, Ann Napolitano writes the beautiful recovery story of Edward Adler, “the miracle boy” who works hard to overcome the unimaginable.
Edward “Eddie” Adler is a twelve-year-old boy who moves from New York to Los Angeles with his mother, father, brother and one hundred and eighty-three passengers. There is nothing extraordinary about him, until he survives a plane crash when no other person makes it.
Although it may seem hard to believe, the novel Dear Edward is loosely inspired by the true story of a plane crash that occurred in Africa in 2010. According to BBC News, Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashed while attempting to land, killing more than 100 people on board. The only survivor was Ruben van Assouw, a nine-year-old Dutch boy.
So Napolitano found inspiration in a real event. Like many other people around the world, the author followed the story of the crash, and the boy who, against all odds, beat death.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Napolitano said of the crash “This story flayed me. I could not imagine how that boy would be ok and I could feel from the stickiness of my obsession that I was going to have to write a book that created a set of circumstances to make him ok,” the writer said.
Napolitano’s deep interest in the case eventually turned into raw but hopeful fiction. It is noteworthy that, Dear Edward focuses primarily on the idea of a child who survives a tragic plane crash and not on the life of Ruben Van Assouw himself.
Napolitano’s fiction
Dear Edward is a tough, emotional, but heartfelt book. Ann Napolitano, masterfully weaves a heartbreaking and uplifting story about personal tragedy and the delicate and courageous journey of recovering from a shattered heart.
Dear Edward moves back and forth between two timelines: it alternates between the events leading up to the Newark plane crash and Edward’s life as he struggles to recover physically and emotionally. Both timelines run side by side throughout the novel.
While on the plane, the reader meets some of the passengers. The book highlights the stories of Edward’s family; his professor father, his screenwriter mother and his adored 15-year-old brother; Florida, a New Age Filipina who remembers her past lives; Benjamin, an Afghanistan war veteran who is questioning his sexuality; Veronica, a seductive stewardess who hypnotizes most of the passengers; a dying tycoon, some crew members, and others.
The author navigates through the minds of the passengers, from the beginning of the flight to the moment of impact. Moving forward and backward before and after the accident creates a strange sense of unease. And the fact is that exploring the hopes and dreams of those doomed to die leaves a bitter taste.
Throughout the text, Napolitano ratchets up the tension as she reveals the details of the crash of Flight 2977. There is an accurate account of the strange weather conditions that plagued the sky that day and the human errors that led to the collapse of the Airbus A321 somewhere in Colorado.
As for the other timeline, the novel focuses on Edward’s existence after the tragedy and his struggle to build a new life. As you might expect, the boy has no sense of having survived the accident.
When Edward wakes up in the hospital he is traumatized in body and soul, almost as if detached from his own existence. Not only has the boy suffered the violence of the accident, but he has also lost his loved ones and the warm world he used to inhabit.
After the death of his immediate family, Edward is moved to New Jersey to live with his aunt and uncle. They have no children and the arrival of their nephew poses significant adjustment challenges for everyone. Edward struggles to eat and sleep. Completely unable to return to normalcy, he struggles to understand the meaning of his survival.
In his new home, John and Lacey do everything they can to protect him. Although the couple is not quite sure how to deal with him, nor how to help him cope with his desolate emptiness, they both make a heartfelt effort to help him.
In the midst of the maelstrom, the boy finds new hope in Shay, a quirky, friendly neighbor his own age. Almost immediately, this new friendship becomes a stabilizing and healing force for Edward. “No one can ever hurt you again,” Shay tells him. “You’ve already lost everything, haven’t you?”
With Shay’s unconditional support, the boy slowly begins to reconnect with life.
The text exalts the important role played by friends and family in the protagonist’s recovery process. It is beautiful to see how those who touch Edward’s life with some compassion help him discover who he is becoming.
Edward’s grief process: “You’ll never be a normal kid”
For years, Edward does his best to understand his pain and his sudden fame and to find his place in a world without his parents and brother. At some point in his emotional journey, Edward asks Dr. Mike when he will overcome his loss, when he will regain his joy for life.
The noble therapist explains to him that the pain he has experienced will never completely go away. Rather than “getting over” and “forgetting” the tragedy, Edward has been learning to live with the enormous weight of what has happened.
“What happened is baked into your bones, Edward. It lives under your skin. It’s not going away. It’s part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die. What you’ve been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that,” the specialist explains.
The book shows how tragedy becomes a part of him and transforms him. Although Edward will never be a normal child, he will eventually find enough courage to give his life a new meaning after the accident.
Ann Napolitano takes the lonely, broken boy and does her best to give him a new purpose. It is especially interesting how the author reveals the complexity of the grieving process and unravels the protagonist’s numbness, mental fog, fugue states, and periods of extreme deep sadness or anger.
Learn to trust and love again
When you lose someone you love deeply, that love never erodes, despite death or time. Napolitano uses James Baldwin’s quote to beautifully reflect this idea: “We contain the other, hopelessly and forever”.
Dear Edward is about survival, grief, memories, loss and healing. But it is also about friendship, hope, resilience and the amazing capacity we humans have to learn to trust and love again. It is a moving and profound story.
Napolitano offers us a powerful book about restoring hope and rebuilding a life in the face of insurmountable loss. It is a skillful meditation on how to live a meaningful life in the darkest of times.
“I started writing Dear Edward in an effort to discover how someone – in this case, a young boy – can learn not just to survive, but to truly live. It took me eight years to write this story. In that time, I found that the empathy of others is essential in clearing a path through grief. I hope readers of Dear Edward discover similar wells of kindness in their own lives,” the writer said.
Upon publication, the novel received numerous accolades, including inclusion on the Best Books list by The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Real Simple, Women’s World, LibraryReads Parade, and Amazon.