Victor Lodato

Edgar and Lucy Victor Lodato

Eight-year-old Edgar Finis loyalty is torn between the two women in his life. Theres his mother, Lucy, who, though she has moments where she loves him, mostly disappears at night with her various “suitors.†And then theres his grandmother, Florence, who dotes on him to the point where she is at a loss when he isnt around. Since his fathers suicide, Florence and Edgars relationship has become obsessive, each fully dependent on the other. When Florence suddenly dies, Lucy is thrown into the role of main caretaker and doesnt know how to handle her new job. But as Edgar and Lucy adjust, they must also deal with Ron, a local butcher who wants to court Lucy, and Conrad, an unsettlingly attentive adult whose intentions are at one more sinister and more innocent than Edgar could ever know. After Conrad separates Edgar from his mother, the man and the boy form a home life of two, isolated deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, an arrangement that is not at all one-sided, even as Lucy, their hometown, and as time goes on, a wider world hunts for the boy. A new literary novel from and Weissberg Award winning playwright and PEN USA Award for Fiction winning writer Victor Lodato, Edgar and Lucy is a masterfully written story of a broken family struggling to stay together. ""I love this book. Profoundly spiritual and hilariously specific...an unusual and intimate epic that manages to capture the wonder and terror of both child and parenthood with an uncanny clarity."" - Lena Dunham, bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl ""This tale gradually exerts a fiendish grip on the reader"" - Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand “Took my breath away.†— Sophie McManus, author of The Unfortunates ""A quirky coming-of-age novel that deepens into something dark and strange without losing its heart or its sense of wonder."" - Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of The Leftovers ""Victor Lodato may be our bard of the sadness, humor, and confusion of loss. He senses the absurdities and elation of mourning and childhood with a capacious precision that brings to mind J. D. Salinger, Lorrie Moore, Karen Russell, even James Joyce. Edgar and Lucy will make you feel things you haven't felt in ages."" - Daniel Torday, author of The Last Flight of Poxl West