If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close. With these words Edgar Mint, half-Apache and mostly orphaned, makes his unshakable claim on our attention. In the course of Brady Udall’s high-spirited, inexhaustibly inventive novel, Edgar survives not just this bizarre accident, but a hellish boarding school for Native American orphans, a well-meaning but wildly dysfunctional Mormon foster-family, and the loss of most of the illusions that are supposed to make life bearable.
- Barnesandnoble.com
Brady Udall: The Powells.com Interview
Discussion Questions
- Edgar: Main protagonist.
- Barry Pinkley: Doctor who saves Edgar's life and then obsessively follows him throughout his life
- Nelson Norman: Sadistic bully at the Willie Sherman School.
- Lana
- Cecil: Edgar's best friend at school, fellow victim of the bullies, wise child.
- Jeffrey
- Rosa
- Grandma Paul
- Arnold
- Willie Sherman