Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano 5/5

To be honest, I thought this was going to be another island survival book(maybe because of the birds on the cover…I really don’t know why my brain just assumed this). So that goes to show that I didn’t even read anything about it before picking it as an add on for my Book of the Month box(don’t be a dumb dumb like me and pick a book without knowing what it is). Fortunately, that was not a problem in the end.

Dear Edward follows 12 year old Edward Adler after he is the sole survivor of a plane crash, outliving his parents and his brother. It also shows us glimpses of others on the flight before the accident, including a military vet, an elderly wealthy man, a wunderkind, and a hippie woman running away from domestic life.

Edward goes to live with his aunt and uncle who try to protect him from the media and to of course be the type of guardians to give him what he needs.

Before the crash, Edward was usually called Eddie. He accepts being called Edward now because the crash had made him feel like a different person. He feels as if a piece of him still lives in the sky.

Edward becomes friends with his neighbor named Shay, who really becomes an important person in his life and she was responsible for helping bring him back into the light. I feel like he is at his most depressed when he cannot be close to her in certain parts of the book.

After a couple years, Edward finds that his uncle had hidden mail from him, and it is with Shay that he finds the strength to go through all the info his uncle has gathered on the crash and sees that family members and friends of his flight mates have written him, and some with requests.

For example, a woman from the flight was a photographer so her loved one had written to Edward that he should take more photos in his life. Some were a bit more demanding requests but I was happy that a couple were just about their lives or asking about his.

Do I feel it was rude for people to make requests of him? Only the ones written in ways to make him feel bad if he didn’t. Edward didn’t ask to be the only one to survive the crash. Was it luck or fate that he made it and not another soul came close?

Edward and Shay eventually responded to some of the letters and If I remember right, they planned on responding to all of them. I believe connecting with these people and learning more about his flight mates was his biggest light in the darkness.

I read that Dear Edward was actually based on a true story. It was based on Ruben Van Assouw, the soul survivor of a plane crash in 2010. His aunt and uncle did a great job with protecting Ruben, so Ann Napolitano had no way of knowing if he was doing okay. Because of this, she needed to create a set of circumstances under which a little boy in that situation could believably become a whole person, in spite of or even because of what he’d lost(I found this statement on bookclubchat.com).

Dear Edward was an emotional read but it was not a book that brought tears to my eyes. It was more of me watching a young man recover but also knowing that no matter what, it will follow him. But with the support of those left that love him, Edward will live his life to the fullest.