Everyone has lost someone or something that was important to them, whether it's a favorite family member or a cherished childhood toy. In the book Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo, we follow our main character Andrew Blur, an angry, temperamental, and rebellious young adult, as he deals with the death of his close friend, Edward 'Eddie' Fulton. While Eddie is dead for the entirety of the book, he is the secondary main character of the story as the plot revolves around Andrew figuring out what Eddie was getting up to in the last 6 months of his life and how these odd activities led to his death. Eddie was an intelligent, curious, and rebellious person, and these traits directly led to his death. Andrew has to deal with the death of Eddie, figuring out the truth behind how he died, and being haunted by both the memories of Eddie and his ghost.
Summer Sons is a southern gothic horror novel and this plays out in several parts of the book and its plot. Andrew and Eddie can see ghosts, 'haunts', and have since they were children when they shared a traumatic experience while lost in the woods of a childhood home. This shared ability brought them even closer and for the next decade or so of their lives, they spent almost every moment together so when Eddie had decided to move away for college a semester earlier than Andrew, it left them both confused and at a loss. We see the extent of their friendship in the quote, "One hundred thousand hours were packed on top of each other in Eddie's lingering scent: eleven years old and pressing cut palms with tears in their eyes, swearing brotherhood; thirteen and boxing up his bedroom for their move to Columbus, Eddie shell-shocked and silent over the loss of his mother and father and home… twenty-one and putting in their applications for the same graduate program in the campus cafe. That's where it broke, when Eddie surprised him with an earlier admission and a request that Andrew wait him out. Their first and last extended separation. Andrew had promised to follow behind, toes at Eddie's heels," (Mandelo 8-9). Andrew and Eddie had gone through a lot together, from the loss of Eddie's family to the sudden development of the ability to see spirits. All of these shared experiences and moments created a close bond between them that was hard for anyone else to break, even girlfriends or other friends. They had spent a lot of time together and had planned on staying together but this sudden change, the newness of their separation, had given Eddie a freedom he hadn't had before. With this freedom, Eddie had decided to find out more and get to the bottom of their supernatural ability, something he and Andrew had promised never to discuss with anyone else. Because of the distance between them, Andrew was left unaware of whom Eddie was hanging out with, what he was doing, and how these things tied into his death. So when Andrew finally moved into the house Eddie had bought, with the roommate and friend he'd barely heard about, and notebooks full of research on a topic no one else was supposed to be aware of, he felt even more out of the loop and like he needed to play catch up to figure out what it was he had missed in the months of their separation.
When Andrew arrives at the house Eddie had bought and had been living in, it serves as a constant reminder to Andrew of what Eddie had wanted them to have. Andrew describes the house as, "-close and charming. It was supposed to have been theirs" (Mandelo 10). The house represents the future Eddie had been building for them, and all of the potential their lives had together, but that potential had died with Eddie. Eddie had decorated and set up Andrew's room the exact way he knew Andrew would want it, and it had been waiting for him to show up and move all of his own stuff in to complete it. The room was made for Andrew to live with him long term and we see this in the quote, "Eddie had put together a perfect room, a room that held all of him without the slightest effort… No part of Andrew could conceive of the room as a goodbye offering. It was too much a welcome to the life in Nashville that Eddie had talked up on his calls, the impending reunion after their brief, uncomfortable separation" (Mandelo 17). The room, even more so than the house itself, illustrates the potential of their future together in this new town, and now Andrew has to live with the ghost of this potential as well as the ghost of Eddie, both literally and metaphorically. The house and all of Eddie's possessions metaphorically haunt Andrew as constant reminders of his absence, which is clear in the quote, "He would walk in and see Eddie's things, pace over his footprints like he was waiting for him to arrive" (Mandelo 10). All of Eddie's stuff made it seem like he was always just waiting for Eddie to come home and this constant feeling of 'maybe he's just out right now,' delays Andrew's ability to move on. Andrew is also tormented, and literally haunted, by Eddie's ghost, which follows him around and won't let him forget about him, appearing at the worst times and taking over Andrew's entire attention. With these constant reminders of Eddie, Andrew is constantly grieving his death.
As Andrew digs deeper into what Eddie was doing up to the point of his death, he doesn't allow himself to move on until he figures out what exactly had happened to him. Another media that has similar ideas about dealing with grief and moving on from a loss is the comic, Amazing Fantasy #15, which debuted the character of Peter Parker/Spiderman. In this comic, we see Peter Parker lose his Uncle Ben, an important father figure, in a home robbery gone wrong. Both Peter and Andrew feel like it's their fault that the person they cared about died; Peter because he had an opportunity to stop the robber before it happened and had decided not to, and Andrew because he wasn't there to help protect Eddie from the mess he had gotten himself into. After the deaths, both Peter and Andrew try to avenge their deaths. Peter tracks down the murderer and using his superpowers, he turns the murderer over to the police in an act to ease some of the guilt he feels over Uncle Ben's death. Andrew had to track Eddie's last steps, following every lead Eddie had dug up to discover who had killed him and then making sure the killers get arrested. In both stories, the main characters feel this guilt over the death of someone they care deeply about and they both try to appease this guilt by bringing justice to the killers, even if they put themselves at risk along the way. In the end, both characters realize that even though the killers have been put in jail, they still don't feel better and they realize that in the end, they need to do more than bring the story to an artificial end; they need to move on and they both work towards healing in other, healthier ways.
After getting attacked by the same people who killed Eddie, Andrew has to accept the fact that Eddie was dead and not coming back no matter how hard he, or the ghost of Eddie, tried. After accepting the death of the real Eddie, Andrew realizes he has to get rid of the ghost of Eddie that haunts him by returning to the place where they both developed their powers. The last chapter of the book is about Andrew accepting that his and Eddie's story would never have the ending they wanted. We see this in the quote, "As boys they'd been happy here, together, and he felt scraps of the lifelong yearning Eddie had dragged to his grave with him" (Mandelo 359). Andrew has to accept that Eddie, and all possibilities of a future with Eddie in it, were gone and he needed to get rid of the last piece of Eddie to fully accept this. Andrew is accepting that the ghost is only a small part of Eddie, "it held only a fraction, a splinter, of Eddie's adoration and anger and need" (Mandelo 361). Andrew is accepting that not enough of Eddie remains in the ghost for it to be a genuine version of him and the only thing it was causing was harm. So he returns to the exact place he and Eddie had been trapped and he kills the ghost. With the ghost gone, Andrew knows he can move on now, without the constant reminder holding him back, "Without the haunt dogging his steps, the process of grieving was mechanical but raw" (Mandelo 366). Andrew lets himself clean out Eddie's room, lets himself interact with the people Eddie knew and allows himself to think about them beyond their connection to Eddie. Andrew lets himself exist on his own, without the weight of Eddie's death weighing him down. "Andrew had to accept that he was going to take that maybe to his grave" (Mandelo 361). Andrew is resolved now to the fact that any possibilities of their future in Tennessee were gone but now he had a whole new future to look forward to, "Eddie had left him this, also: a future to see through" (Mandelo 366).
After reading Summer Sons, I was satisfied, mildly sad, and slightly wistful. The story didn't teach me, but rather reinforced my belief in the importance of friendship and moving on after tragedy. By holding onto Eddie and not letting himself move on, Andrew spent a lot of the book bitter and angry and that's no way to live. When Andrew allows himself to move on and get rid of the ghost, even the reader feels like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders because everyone understands the feeling of acknowledging that there are some things you can't change, and sometimes it's better to accept that.