The Lives of Edie Pritchard - Larry Watson

Every time I read something by Larry Watson I wonder why it is that I haven’t read more of his work. I know his novels are out there, and I know that I’ve enjoyed each of the ones I’ve read , but for some reason I never go looking for more of them. The Lives of Edie Pritchard, which more or less fell into my lap, just reminded me again how good Watson’s writing is and how wonderfully he captures contemporary life in this country’s western states. 

The Lives of Edie Pritchard is set primarily in Montana where Edie Pritchard grew up alongside the twin brothers who both fell madly in love with her in high school. The brothers are, in fact, so in love with Edie that Dean, the lucky one, married her and Roy, his twin, regularly begged her to run off with him to start a new life despite already being married himself. Edie is a beautiful woman who catches the eye of every man she ever crosses paths with, but her attractiveness is about more than physical beauty. She’s so smart and self-confident that she’s been the big prize in her little part of Montana for as long as anyone can remember. Edie, though, is not happy about being defined only by her beauty, and that’s what has happened to her. She is better than that, and as the years go by, she is losing patience with those too blind to see it.

 

The novel is broken into three distinct sections, each being twenty years removed from the preceding period, of Edie’s life. The first part of the book covers the years 1967-68, the second catches up with Edie in 1987, and the third looks in on her as a 64-year-old grandmother in 2007. Along the way, Edie struggles with her marriage to Dean, a man who never seems to tell her the whole truth about what he is doing or thinking; falls into a second marriage to a man who sees her as his personal possession; and suffers even the sexual harassment of a man in his mid-twenties when she is already the grandmother of an eighteen-year-old granddaughter. All three men learn the hard way that when Edie has had enough, she has well and truly had enough.

Perhaps Edie should never have expected more from her little hometown in Montana. Maybe she was naïve to believe that such a small community would evolve right along with her, and that she would finally be seen as the real woman she knew herself to be. But she would learn the truth soon enough:

 

            “I mean, all of us are someone else through the eyes of others. And for all I know, maybe that other is as true, as real, as the person we believe we are. But the thing is, when you’re back home, you never have a chance to be someone other than who you were then. Even if you never were that person.”

 

Edie, though, is a smart woman who can take care of herself, and she finally gets it right – and does something about it:

 

            “I used to think maybe there’s a God who dreams up a special punishment for each one of us. And mine was to have twin brothers both want me.”

 

Bottom Line: The Lives of Edie Pritchard is a novel filled with memorably deep characters, all of them flawed in one way or the other. That’s part of the joy of watching Edie Pritchard finally figure out who she is and what she wants from the rest of her life. This is a good one.