finished reading

One of my favorite authors has done it again: a beautiful story told masterfully. A chance encounter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art turns into an exploration of memory and connection. Told through a series of conversations and shared events, the current-day timeline follows 53-year-old Daphne as she reconnects with her first step-father, Eddie. Decades after he vanished from her life, their reunion forces them to look back at the brief year they spent as a family and the indelible car accident they experienced together when Daphne was just nine years old.

The second narrative thread pieces together the events of that snowy night, unpacking the far-reaching effects of a single, momentous event and the secrets Daphne's mother kept in its wake. The characters are relatable, complex people who feel entirely real. It’s a sweet, gentle yet quietly profound story about how love endures and how the stories we tell each other can shape our lives.

From the publisher:

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.