Whistler –Ann Patchett (Harper: June 2)

Fifty-three-year-old Daphne, an English teacher at a private school, and her husband Jonathan are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when they encounter the man who was her stepfather for two years when she was a child.

Circumstances led Eddie Triplett to leave the family abruptly when Daphne was 9, something Daphne and her younger sister Leda didn’t understand at the time and had mostly forgotten about as her mother remarried and the years passed. Daphne hasn’t had any contact with him in 44 years.

The dance of reconnection between Daphne and Eddie is a pleasure to read. Eddie is a warm, witty 70-year-old who has spent his life working as a literary editor. Although Daphne recalls some of the events of their time as stepfather and stepdaughter, she is essentially meeting a stranger, but one she is very interested in getting to know. But their meeting leads Daphne to revisit a traumatic experience she shared with Eddie, which has shaped her character and her life without her realizing it.

Whistler explores what it’s like to grow up not knowing the truth of parts of your own life. People keep secrets from family members, especially children, who also often don’t understand adult lives even when they’re witnessing them. Why did their mother marry and divorce twice?

How do siblings, in this case sisters, cope with these earthshaking changes? It turns out they don’t experience them the same way at all. They know different things, make different inferences, and feel differently about what they know or think they know. They too kept information from each other, sometimes intentionally, sometimes believing the other already knew it. Life comes at you fast when you’re a kid and it’s hard to make sense of people, events, and your own feelings.

In this case, Daphne has a chance to revisit part of her childhood and learn the truth that had evaded her. She gains a fuller understanding of her mother, her father, and the man who was her stepfather for a brief period. At the same time, Daphne’s husband is in Wisconsin cleaning out his mother’s house with his sister and experiencing his own version of reconnecting with the past and developing a more complete understanding of his mother’s life.

The other question as you read is whether Daphne and Eddie will maintain a relationship going forward and, if so, what will it look like? After all, he was only part of her life for two short years nearly half a century earlier. Do they have a future? As Australian songwriter Paul Kelly sings in “To Her Door,” “Could [s]he make a picture and get them all to fit?”

As always, Patchett has a light touch in her characterization, dialogue, and prose. The narrative carries you along, mostly gently but occasionally through a stretch of rapids. These people are smart, often charming and funny, and have good intentions. It’s a pleasure to spend time with them. As I read, I wanted to be friends with Eddie Triplett. (But maybe not his old friend Skip and his wife Polly.)

Whistler is a rich character study with a mystery at its heart, filled with light and shadow in the most artful way.

So why is the book called Whistler and why is there a painting of a horse on the cover? All will be revealed. Suffice to say, the haunting story of Whistler provides the adult Daphne with a key insight into her character as a girl and the life she went on to live. It’s one that will move you and inspire you.

I’ll leave you with an excerpt that resonated strongly with me.

“How was it that a weekday trip to a museum with my husband had plunged me back into childhood at the age of fifty-three? I knew what Leda [a therapist] would say. She would say it was because childhood never leaves us. We seal the room up and cover it in sheetrock. We dry and sand and paint, but the pocket of history remains, and sooner or later someone always winds up tapping on the wall, commenting on the way it sounds strangely hollow in there, and then the whole thing comes tumbling down.”