Losing Eddie — Deborah Joy Corey

Deborah Joy Corey's disturbing portrait of a dysfunctional family in rural New Brunswick won the prestigious SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award. This popular dramatization of the best-selling first novel was dramatized by the author and first heard on CBC Radio in 1996.

Narrated by a nameless nine-year-old girl, Losing Eddie recounts with heart-wrenching detachment a succession of tragedies that unravel an already vulnerable household on a lonely backwoods highway. Mama suffers from mental illness, Daddy hides out in the wellhouse drinking beer, and "Sister" has a brutish husband who slaps her around. When 15-year-old Eddie comes home from reform school, things seem to be looking up. But before long, Eddie is gone again for good killed in a drunk-driving crash. None of this resembles the images of happy family life on TV, but Corey's stoic child narrator clings to her faith that everything will be all right.