Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

by Heather Weber

In this lyric memoir of loss, the narrator's relationship with a beloved brother disintegrates against the backdrop of her mother's mental illness and, ultimately, her brother's death. Part poetry, part elegy, "Dear Boy" grapples with the universal issues of human longing and grief while praising the unexpected beauty to be found in the wake of such sorrows.

Genres: Memoir

258 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2013

About the author

Heather Weber is an author, pastor, and NT scholar in Iowa. You can find out more about her at www.heatherweber.org.

Reviews

[Tarn Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Boy goes in my all-time favorite memoir list. Weber structures the book as a series of letters to her brother, who has died as a young man. As children, she and her brother had been devoted to each other, but the chaos in their family, wrought by their mentally ill mother, had created a rift. This book is her goodbye, the conversation she was never able to have. The memories, often from a child’s point of view, are heartbreaking, but the simplicity and lyricism of Weber’s language, along with her sincerity, honesty, clarity, and powerful combination of strength and tenderness imbue this difficult story with beauty and hope.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this memoir for the form--to see how the story was constructed in letters. I read it in a day for the tug it wrapped around my heart--for her brother, her impossible mother, and, finally for herself to forgive all of them. This book is full of largeness of character and human faith and unafraid of its way.

[Jane Cathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes I started reading this memoir this morning and at 7 pm I’m finished. I’m broken , and it’s rare for me to cry over a book .

[Steven Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dear Boy is an excellent memoir about the death of Heather Weber's brother, a young man with a family. The epistolary form is particularly interesting since Weber lets her story emerge from a series of letters written to each of the characters, including herself. This form adds freshness and variety to the reading experience since the voice naturally shifts into different registers as the characters she addresses change. She also uses pseudonyms for each character calling her mother Peaches and her brother Boy, for instance, which seems off-putting at first but becomes interesting as the generic names fill with the personalities of her different characters. In the end it is a winning move on the writer's part. I do think that Weber raises some issues that need to be more fully addressed, such as the causes of the tensions between her and her brother and mother, but on the whole the book is rich and interesting with an important theme: her bother "wasn't perfect and neither was she," Weber explains in one of the last letters in the book. "And underneath all that imperfection was love."

[Judith Shadford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haunting, subtle, almost simple in its early entries, Heather Weber has kind of created a stunning monument to her brother and her own childhood out of a spiderweb. Short messages addressed to her brother following his tragic death in an auto accident: Dear Boy. She is Girl. He is Boy. Their father is Number One. Her mother is only called Peaches, not an endearment. Boy is eventually named as Henry. The stepfather is Number Two. And yet this quasi-anonymity pays off because it pulled me into Weber's subconscious, not her more easily-accessed memories. The device probably could not be repeated, but it works brilliantly in this memoir. We don't remember our family, mourn those we love by their full names--that's journalism. My heart is entwined with the essence of Heather and Henry. Unforgettable.

[Laura Julier · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is the story of a complicated and difficult family, swirling around the central event of the tragic death of a beloved brother, crafted with deep care, lightness, respect, and an innovative structure. From the first, as you are dumped into the story knowing where it's headed, through letters to "The Boy" from "The Girl," you're struggling to follow the threads, untangle the knots of relationship and emotion. It's unsettling to read, at first, in the way it must have been to be a girl child wedged among the figures in this family. I couldn't put this down once I started, read late into the night, carried the voice and the longing and the confusion on into my next day. When you pick this up to begin reading, be prepared.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

profoundly moving

Thank you for sharing your grief, heartbreak, and love in a broken family. Through it all hope peeks out. Love is present.

[Char · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of this book is a good friend of mine, and I was more than happy to read her memoir. However, I did not expect to feel so many strong emotions that connected me to her past and her present. I cried at the loss of her brother, I railed against the frustration of having a mentally ill parent, and I felt some comfort at the restored relationships that came out of the wake of such a tragedy. I read straight through this book in one afternoon because I couldn't disengage myself from Heather's prose or the stories that shaped her into the person I know today.

This book is for anyone who enjoys memoirs or non-fiction of any kind.

[Alina Borger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is lovely, haunting, provocative. As a reader, I felt Weber's loss deeply. As a teacher, I plan to introduce the book as an option next year for my 10th grade memoir unit.