A Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

This lushly written coming of age story is set in rural Wisconsin, where young Edgar, born mute, communicates with his family and the unusual breed of dogs they raise using only sign language. Each of the Sawtelle dogs has a unique personality. Some are more fully developed as characters then some of the humans in this novel.

Edgar lives a wonderful life with his mother, Trudy, his father, Gar, and his beloved dog, Almondine. Then, when Edgar is a young teenager, Gar's brother Claude, absent for many years, returns and sets in motion a chain of events that changes things irreparably.

When Gar is mysteriously stricken and dies suddenly, Edgar, unable to summon aid, is distraught and blames himself. After Gar's death, Trudy is unable to run the kennel on her own and turns to Claude for help. Gradually insinuating himself further into Trudy's life, he alienates Edgar, who suspects Claude may have had a hand in Gar's death. When he attempts revenge on Claude, things go horribly wrong and Edgar is forced to flee. Taking some of the kennel dogs with him, Edgar lives on his own in the Chequamegon forest for several months, foraging for food by breaking into abandoned cabins, until he is taken in by Henry, a kindly recluse. After living with Henry for a time, Edgar decides to return home, and the story turns toward its tragic ending.

"Edgar Sawtelle" has been compared to Hamlet, and understandably so. But the main plot line, the relationships between Edgar, Gar, Trudy and Claude, is interwoven with other plot lines that trail off and go nowhere, and the book suffers for it. There is a wild dog, who Edgar befriends and names Forte, that shows up intermittently in the story. There is the ghost of an old farmer that Edgar encounters while cleaning our Henry's storage shed, and a little girl who Edgar meets at a diner who claims to know Edgar's "secret". One keeps hoping that these characters will reappear later in some meaningful way and contribute to the denouement, but that doesn't happen. A tighter edit of the 550 page book would have resulted in a trimmer, more readable product without sacrificing the emotional punch it delivered.

The ending of "Edger Sawtelle" is heart wrenching, one of the most tragic in fiction. No spark of salvation anywhere, just utter devastation. This seems so wrong considering the bond between the dogs and the humans emphasized over the course of the story. The ending just doesn't seem to go with the rest of the book.

Wroblewski has crafted a wonderfully descriptive, yet flawed novel which has gotten rave reviews that it doesn't deserve.