It begins with a monkey. It ends with an inescapable tragedy.
In 1957, Gwendolyn is living the domestic dream as the prized wife of the dashing Dr. Paul Stanley Bollinger, with three beautiful, healthy children and a charming Edwardian home in the historic town of Cape Girardeau.
Enter Eddie, an inebriated monkey brought home as a poker prize by her equally drunk husband. Thus begins Gwendolyn’s years-long struggle to domesticate two unruly fellas. Eddie is a hilarious handful but no match for Paul Stanley and his increasing penchant for bourbon and nurses. Meanwhile, as the predictable 1950s evolve into the increasingly tumultuous ’60s and beyond, Gwendolyn finds her conservative beliefs challenged by the realities of racism, homophobia, traditional masculinity, the sexual revolution, and the struggle for women's rights.
For over forty years, a time marked by hilarity, heartbreak, and tragedy, Eddie serves as her clown prince, her unexpected confidant, and when all is said and done, her solace. The story of Gwendolyn and Eddie is ultimately about cages—the ones we are born into, those we construct for ourselves, and the ones we impose on those we love.
It begins with a monkey. It ends with an inescapable tragedy.
In 1957, Gwendolyn is living the domestic dream as the prized wife of the dashing Dr. Paul Stanley Bollinger, with three beautiful, healthy children and a charming Edwardian home in the historic town of Cape Girardeau.
Enter Eddie, an inebriated monkey brought home as a poker prize by her equally drunk husband. Thus begins Gwendolyn’s years-long struggle to domesticate two unruly fellas. Eddie is a hilarious handful but no match for Paul Stanley and his increasing penchant for bourbon and nurses. Meanwhile, as the predictable 1950s evolve into the increasingly tumultuous ’60s and beyond, Gwendolyn finds her conservative beliefs challenged by the realities of racism, homophobia, traditional masculinity, the sexual revolution, and the struggle for women's rights.
For over forty years, a time marked by hilarity, heartbreak, and tragedy, Eddie serves as her clown prince, her unexpected confidant, and when all is said and done, her solace. The story of Gwendolyn and Eddie is ultimately about cages—the ones we are born into, those we construct for ourselves, and the ones we impose on those we love.
Gwendolyn breathed in the familiar earthy aroma of the Mississippi River that mingled bracingly with the bright bergamot scent of her Earl Grey tea. She cherished these quiet moments on her rooftop landing, which offered a splendid view of the river’s graceful curve to the south. Known as a widow’s walk, this picturesque perch, encircled by a wrought-iron railing, added a special charm to her Edwardian wedding cake of a house. It was predawn in June, the air still cool and gentle before the oppressive humidity of the day would descend, demanding her attention to the cherished labors of mothering and wifery. She smiled at the whimsical thought that she might resemble the Victorian wives who once stood here, pacing with worry and anticipation for their riverboat captain husbands’ return. It was a peculiar notion, considering her husband was a doctor, not a riverboat captain, and very much alive—perhaps a little too alive at times. Her life, she reminded herself, was a dream come true.
The shrill ring of the phone downstairs shattered her reverie. Glancing at her Cartier Tank watch—a wedding anniversary gift that she never took off—she noted that it was almost 5 a.m. This could only mean one thing, she thought as she hurried down to the kitchen. As she reached for the phone, she tried to calm her breathing. She was, after all, not one of those nineteenth century aspiring widows who had once paced her rooftop.
“Good morning. Dr. Bollinger’s residence.”
“Isn’t this your house, too?” came a familiar voice from the other end.
“Yes, Dixie. What has he done this time?”
“What are you talking about, darlin’? I’m calling to see if you can fill in as a fourth for bridge next week.”
“At five in the morning?”
Dixie roared her famously loud and quasi-endearing laugh, a cross between a foghorn and a wild animal’s mating call. “Come on, Gwennie. Of course, it’s about Paul Stanley.” She said his name as everyone did, like it was one word: Paulstanley.
Gwendolyn approached with caution. “Yes?”
“As I am sure you know, he was here for poker night, or as I call it, the Small Dick Society.”
“I’m well aware you call it that. What has he done?”
“Well, there is good news and there is bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Dixie, it’s now five-o-five in the morning. I really don’t care.”
Another booming, semi-disturbing laugh erupted that made Gwendolyn wonder if Dixie had been up all night drinking with the men. As soon as the question occurred to her, she dismissed it for the silly thought it was. Of course, Dixie had been.
“Okay, Gwennie, well enough. I don’t sleep anymore as a matter of principle, but I suppose that’s unique to me. So, here goes. The good news is your husband is drunk, but he’s being driven home. Well, I suppose that qualifies as mixed news.”
“Dixie, please, what is the bad news?”
“He’s bringing home a drunk monkey.”
Silence. Then, “Go on.”
“He won him in the poker game from Busby, who got him, you will remember, as a pet for our Betty, who, as you also know, is off to college. She never really took to him, and now he’s yours. One less thing for me to worry about.”
Gwendolyn expelled a big sigh. “Well, at least tell me his name.”
“We just called him Monkey. Name him what you like.”
Dixie was married to Paul Stanley’s cousin Busby, another one of the many Bollinger doctors. She was one of Gwendolyn’s best friends despite the always-startling laugh. Women in Southeast Missouri didn’t normally guffaw. But Dixie, as her name suggested, was not from around there, but somewhere more . . . well . . . Deep South. Gwendolyn wouldn’t recall much more of the conversation with Dixie, so discombobulated by the news that she was about to acquire a monkey—and just her fate, probably an alcoholic monkey at that.
Paul Stanley arrived home, and a monkey indeed accompanied him on a leash. Gwendolyn, after thirteen years of marriage and well accustomed to dealing with Paul Stanley’s follies, had never encountered one quite like this. She opened the back door and found her husband with his eyes at half-mast and with that askew smile she once considered charming, and at certain disarmed moments, still did.
This was not one of them.
The monkey was a scrawny little creature, jumping from one corner of her visual frame to another, screeching in the most disturbing way. All Gwendolyn could do was take the leash from her sheepish husband and let him pass by her and stumble his way up the stairs.
She stood there with a leashed monkey as the summer dawn began its primitive stirrings. Then what ensued was the strangest moment, as if time stood absolutely still.
Eddie the Monkey, and Gwendolyn the Wife, looked into each other’s eyes.
Gwendolyn realized she had just named the monkey Eddie, a name with which she had no history. This gave her pause. Then a memory emerged of something Paul Stanley had said to her when he was jokingly replying to her question of why he insisted on shortening her name to the more obscure iteration of Wendy: “You name it, you tame it.”
Eddie started a frightening cacophony of movement and sound. This monkey dance almost made her smile. This display of animalistic fireworks didn’t particularly cow Gwendolyn, who was raising three high-spirited children and one unruly husband. She gave a sharp yank on the leash, as she would a dog in training, and took Eddie down to the unfinished basement. When she let him off the leash, he leaped from one exposed pipe to another, dominating the space as he might have if he had been in a jungle. It occurred to Gwendolyn that he could be trying to intimidate her with this ferocious display of territorial virility, but she dismissed this thought when she realized that he was a monkey, and a drunk one at that. She brought him down a large bowl of clean water, a dog bed, and made a mental note that she would need to do some research later that morning to find out what to feed such a creature.
But for now, she knew one thing for certain: This monkey named Eddie needed to sober up. And she needed to get on with what this day would require of her.
She set about fulfilling her tasks. Three children needed rousing, grooming, and feeding. She reminded herself as she encountered their usual grumpy protests that she and Paul Stanley had produced the perfect family. Gilda, ten, Oliver, six, and her baby Franny, five; each unique in their personalities, but all three blessed with good looks and smarts.
As soon as she marshaled the children into their tasks for the morning and answered the inevitable call from the hospital about Dr. Bollinger’s whereabouts and how soon would he get there, she knew she would inevitably have to open the basement door and confront God knows what behind it.
The basement was as still as her heart was not. She took a few steps down the stairs, trying to adjust to the gloom. The eerie quiet unsettled her. What was she expecting? A raging King Kong to come crashing out of the darkness as if in a Hollywood horror movie?
She walked around a corner, and there she saw him. His front paws curled up in front of him like a prayer, his long, sinuous tail wrapped around his body like an embrace. He peered at her sideways, whimpering what seemed to her to be a sad song. Except for her children, Gwendolyn never gave in to moments of sentimentality; it was a human indulgence that she had needed to forsake some time ago. But she couldn’t help herself in that moment as she saw the scared little creature in the corner of her basement, so far away from a jungle, no trees to fly through or anything that looked like home. She realized that this little beast was now utterly her responsibility. His very survival was up to her.
The thought could not linger. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she turned to walk up the stairs to the kitchen. She paused in the doorway as she noticed that Eddie’s whimpering had evolved into cooing.
In the kitchen, she panicked. What does a monkey eat anyway? Bugs? Lettuce? Canned tuna? Are they vegetarians or carnivores?
She needed to find out. The last thing she wanted on her hands this morning was a monkey with diarrhea. In the living room sat a low bookshelf next to Paul Stanley’s reading chair, where resided his prized and much-used set of Encyclopedia Brittanica.
What kind of monkey is Eddie? There must be many kinds. She studied the pictures and decided this little mousy fellow, who looked sort of like a monk, his big frantic eyes peering from under what seemed like a monk’s hood, was a capuchin. He had to be. They came from Central and South America, and that wasn’t so far. For Pete’s sake, Gwendolyn! Eddie didn’t migrate here. She made a mental note to find out from Dixie where he actually came from.
She couldn’t find any information about the capuchin diet. Back in the kitchen, she surveyed her latest grocery acquisitions for something that would make sense. Bananas! Monkeys eat bananas, don’t they? It would have to do for now.
Returning to the kitchen, the first thing she saw was Franny’s and Gilda’s awe-filled expressions as they stood behind the kitchen table looking at something in front of them. Gwendolyn followed their gaze. It was Eddie. He had somehow escaped the basement and pinched a bottle of scotch from the nearby bar, opened it, and was now lapping up the amber liquid that had spilled all over the kitchen counter.
Gwendolyn surprised herself, and certainly her daughters, as she bolted toward Eddie, commanding, “Get back!”
Eddie lurched away from her and cowered in the corner under a cabinet as Gwendolyn cleaned up the spilled liquor. She fixed him with another don’t-mess-with-me-buster look. “You’re not going to be a booze hound in this house. No siree.”
A split second later, the heretofore awestruck girls became activated. Gilda, blonde, blue eyed, and cool as a junior Grace Kelly, remained still as she dissected this strange addition to her otherwise familiar kitchen. Franny bolted forward in her best “Nurse Fran Fuzzy Wuzzy” manner—her father’s affectionate nickname for his big-hearted daughter—intent upon enveloping this darling little creature in her pudgy arms.
Eddie would have nothing of it. With a screech, he fled the oncoming human missile and, to the shock of everyone, leapt onto Gwendolyn’s chest. Clinging to its fine advantage, he made little threatening grabs at Franny, who stopped cold with a crestfallen look. She scooted behind Gilda, tears wetting her little face.
Gilda stood her ground. “Mother, who is that monkey and what is he doing here?”
Gwendolyn moved toward the basement door with Eddie in tow. “He’s our new pet. A gift from your father.”
After making sure Eddie had fresh water and two bananas, Gwendolyn, careful to ensure that the door was closed, returned to deal with her daughters and now Oliver, who had joined them. All three were staring at her as she entered the kitchen.
“Enough of all that. I need to get you fed,” she said, bustling past them.
She got their poached eggs together, displayed on buttered toast with the crust cut off, and delivered them to her children where they sat at the kitchen table.
Gilda was first. “Why is that monkey in our house? You still haven’t explained this adequately.”
Gwendolyn sighed. “Your father has decided we need a monkey, so now you have one,” she said. “His name is Eddie.”
“He doesn’t like us, that’s clear,” Gilda said.
“Why, honey, of course your father likes you. He loves you. That’s why he’s giving you a monkey.”
“The monkey, Mother, he doesn’t like us. Isn’t that obvious to you?”
“Why would you say that?”
Gilda cast a meaningful glance at Franny, who was still whimpering.
Oliver spoke up. “Maybe he just doesn’t like Franny.”
Franny aroused from her despair. “Where did he come from? How did he get here?”
“We’ll have to find out,” Gwendolyn said, turning her attention to getting the children out the door and off to Lorimer Elementary School two blocks away. She made sure all buttons were properly engaged and hair pushed back out of their eyes. As they walked down the sidewalk, Gwendolyn watched them from the back porch, flushed with their adorableness.
She stood in her moment of mute apprehension in front of the basement door when Paul Stanley breezed into the kitchen.
“Hon, where’s the coffee?”
She turned around and looked at him, not smiling. Quickly, her gaze softened. It amazed her how he could end his evening so coarse and witless and emerge in the light of the next day like that: crisp and smelling of soap, his head of thick auburn hair combed back like some windswept actor in Photoplay, smiling at her as if their life had been nothing but an endless walk on a beach.
She releveled her gaze. “Your coffee is in that thermos that you pick up every morning except Sunday, and by the way, you brought home a monkey last night.”
He grabbed the thermos in one dashing swoop as he headed for the door. He stopped and turned to face her, his eyes bemused, his mouth turned into a crooked smile. “Really?” He looked down as if he were trying to recall something, then broadening his smile, he said, “Right. Cute little fella.” He turned to exit. “Of course, you’ll know what to do, Wendy. Good gal.”
The screen door slammed shut behind Paul Stanley. She stared at it, arrested by a muddle of feelings. What was she going to do? She called Dixie and asked if she would come over and help her with the monkey. After all, it wasn’t a situation that most women she knew had to deal with every day.
Dixie arrived around 4 p.m., dressed as if she were going to a party: a cocktail dress with a full-pleated skirt in cardinal red, a black cummerbund, and low-cut bodice—her signature look. Gwendolyn observed her friend, her best friend really, despite their obvious differences in temperament and looks. She was petite, enhanced by her pixie haircut but offset by her bountiful bosom, proudly hoisted, and by her comparison to Gwendolyn, who stood at a statuesque five-ten.
“What the hell are you waiting for,” Dixie bellowed as she rushed past her. “Where’re the rum ’n’ Cokes and the little tea sandwiches?”
“Isn’t that a mixed metaphor?” asked Gwendolyn.
“There is no metaphor intended. Okay, forget the tea cakes. Let’s get down to business.”
Gwendolyn knew this meant she had to produce something with alcohol in it, preferably genteel and Southern. It was, after all, not yet cocktail hour when brown liquor would be required. She made the drinks—lemonade and chilled vodka—and poured Dixie a large one and herself a polite one.
“Okay, Dixie. I would like to use a curse word here, but I won’t. Who the heck is Eddie, and why is he in my basement?”
Dixie snorted. “Eddie? Now that’s choice.” She was already halfway through her poured drink. “As to your question, that is one you will have to ask your husband. Next question?”
Gwendolyn shifted in her chair. “Come on, Dixie, I need help. Please tell me what I’m supposed to do with this—”
“Monkey?”
“Yes, Eddie, the monkey, of course.”
Dixie nodded toward the spiked pitcher of lemonade. Gwendolyn sighed as she reached for it to refill Dixie’s glass. She had learned to squelch her judgments about the people in her life who “liked to drink.”
“Well,” Dixie said, settling into her chair now with her second libation firmly in hand, “Eddie doesn’t like people. I don’t know why, but he doesn’t.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Oh, don’t worry. He does like the one who feeds him. That is, if you aren’t afraid of him.”
“He doesn’t scare me,” Gwendolyn said, knowing as the words left her mouth that she sounded tentative.
Dixie fixed her with a knowing look.
“What?” Gwendolyn asked.
“Maybe the little critter has something to teach you.”
“Good lord! What could that possibly be?”
Dixie drained her glass and then looked at her friend over the rim. “Who the hell knows? But one thing that strikes me is your perfect looks and comportment are not going to be enough to tame that little fucker.”
“You’re talking silly.”
“I know! He’s come into your perfect life to fuck it up.”
“What’s to be learned from that?”
“Just speculating.”
“Well, you can stop wasting your brain. A little monkey is not going to do that thing you said to my life.”
“I like your confidence, sister.” Dixie held out her glass for a refill. “Any further questions?”
Gwendolyn poured her some more from the pitcher. “How on earth did he become an alcoholic?”
Dixie looked at her with her classic amused smile.
“The monkey, I’m talking about,” clarified Gwendolyn.
“How do any of them become lushes? They all like company when they drink, and I suppose Busby was no exception. Actually, I really think he thought it was funny. A drunk monkey can be a lot of fun.”
“I wonder if they have an Alcoholics Anonymous for monkeys.”
“Ha!” hooted Dixie. “Sometimes you pull off a good one.”
Gwendolyn ignored this barbed compliment. “So, where did he come from? Franny wants to know.”
“Hell if I know. He showed up at my house the same way he did yours—in the middle of the night, because of something Busby was up to.”
“You have no idea?”
“I do, but I prefer not to spend too much time on it as I suspect it has something to do with a whore from ’cross the river.” Dixie took a long sip from her drink. Gwendolyn couldn’t tell if she was being snarky or simply recognizing her Bollinger husband. Gwendolyn had always secretly felt she had a lot to learn from Dixie, even though she was at least six years younger than her.
“Well, do you know how old he is at least?”
“Hell no. I didn’t even know he was a boy monkey until I saw him masturbating.”
“No!”
“Yes, Gwendolyn.” She leaned in. “And he was staring right at me when he was doing it.” Dixie paused then snorted out a laugh.
Gwendolyn tried to relax, hoping that this was just one of Dixie’s crude jokes. She stood up and walked over to the basement door, looking at it as she said, “My children will be curious to know where he actually came from.”
Dixie, who didn’t seem wise at all on the surface, did often come up with some useful suggestions. She counseled her to have her kids write an essay on Eddie’s origins. It was a good idea—a trip to the library would reveal more than Dixie could, with her louche ways of accepting odd things.
As she was leaving, Gwendolyn asked if she had any last words. Dixie took her hands in hers and said, “Bless your heart.” As she watched Dixie’s Thunderbird disappear around the corner, she wondered if Dixie, with her slippery tone, plump with innuendo, had just blessed her or cursed her.
That night, when she was putting the girls to bed in their shared room, she offered Dixie’s suggestion. Franny feigned excitement about the project as she turned to her sister and said, “Gilda, you can help me!” As Gwendolyn left the room, she smiled, knowing that Gilda, with her cool eye on all matters, would be the one to do the research and present the results.
Two days later, Gilda presented her mother with the report, neatly bound between two blue pieces of plastic.
“Is this the report you and Franny did on Eddie?” Gwendolyn asked as she prepared dinner, a pea and tuna casserole, which was the Thursday night meal.
“Yes. I presented it at school today,” Gilda said.
“Why don’t you read it to me while I finish cooking?”
Gilda loved to read aloud, especially things that she had written. She began in her precise and clear style, “Two nights ago, my father brought home a monkey namedEddie. He got him as a gift from Uncle Busby and then gave him to Franny, Oliver, and myself so that we could learn to love and care for him. He is a capuchin monkey, and he looks sort of like we do, only with brown fur all over and a long tail that moves around a lot. Capuchin monkeys come from Central or South America, and they are the smartest of all the monkeys in the forest. They are not from Missouri, so they have to be brought here. I called Uncle Busby and asked him how Eddie got here. He said he didn’t know. He got him from someone across the river who owed him money. I thought the debt was for some medical bill, but Aunt Dixie told me it was probably a gambling debt. There is still a mystery about his exact beginning in life. I went to the library and learned about this kind of monkey, and so I think I can guess about what happened and how Eddie came to live with us in Missouri.”
She paused and looked around. Franny and Oliver had crept into the kitchen and were listening with rapt attention. Gwendolyn looked at Gilda with a smile and encouraging nod.
Gilda continued, “He was born in a forest in South America and his family was big, with at least twenty brothers and sisters. They all lived in the trees and had fun swinging from one treetop to another. Their father was what is called an alpha male, which means he can do what monkeys do to have babies with any of the lady monkeys in the family. The mother monkeys will also mate with any other men monkeys that they meet, which makes them different from other kinds of monkey girls. Eddie’s family was very loyal to each other except for the lady monkeys, who would have sexual relations with other men monkeys.”
Gwendolyn turned from the sink. “Where on earth did you learn that phrase?”
“What?”
“Sexual relations?”
“Oh, Aunt Dixie told me all about that. She used a different word, but I think it was a bad word that I didn’t understand so when I asked her what that word meant, she said ‘sexual relations.’”
“Oh, dear. Please continue, I think.”
“Like I said, they were all loyal and would fight together to protect their part of the forest from other monkey families. They are like us because they will eat almost anything, like bugs, rodents, nuts, fruits, birds, even crabs. Actually, in our family we don’t eat bugs or rodents, but still Eddie is what’s called an omnivore just like we are, which means he could eat dinner with us if he wanted to.”
“That’s good to know,” Gwendolyn said with a scintilla of sarcasm but was relieved at the possibility of feeding the monkey leftovers.
Gilda cut her mother off with an exasperated look then continued, “After Eddie was born, he became very in love with his mother. She would carry him around on her tummy and then, when he got a little older, he would ride around on her back as he learned more about how to be a monkey. When he was about three months old, which is probably older in monkey years than it is in human years, he started to learn how to walk. His mother held on to his tail while he tried to walk on his own. He was very happy with his mother and would have stayed with her for a long time, but a monkey hunter from Texas came to his jungle and grabbed him away from his mother and brought him to Missouri, where he needed to find a new mother.”
Gwendolyn turned from her food preparations and stared at her daughter. Gilda looked up from her report. “Now what?” she asked.
“Where did you get that? The part about him being taken from his mother by some Texan?”
“Mrs. Sheets, the librarian, told me this happened to him because it happens to all these monkeys. She said this causes them lots of problems because they have damaged feelings about it.”
Gwendolyn turned back to stirring the instant mashed potatoes. “Cheryl Sheets has some very liberal ideas.”
“I have more, Mother.”
“I can’t wait,” Gwendolyn said under her breath.
Gilda resumed her reporting. “Eddie was very cute as a baby, but he might not grow up to be so cute, especially since he was taken away from his mother he loved. He will find a new mother, who will probably be my mother, but he probably won’t like anyone else. That’s because he is still mad about being taken from his real mother. He can’t talk like we do, but he will let us know about his feelings by being very messy, destroying things we have, throwing his doo-doo at us, and even giving us bad diseases like rabies and hepatitis. I saw Eddie open a bottle of my father’s whisky and that is because he is very smart, like all capuchin monkeys, and he likes to protect his territory by peeing on it. If we take good care of him, he will live to be fifty years old.”
Gwendolyn realized she was holding her stirring spoon aloft as Gilda finished her report. She looked at her daughter, who was staring back at her with her familiar look of resolute confidence.
“That was really nice, dear,” Gwendolyn said, “but don’t you think you emphasized the negative just a bit?”
“I got an A plus from Mrs. Estes,” Gilda answered, defiant.
Gwendolyn realized her mouth was tense as she pulled the pea and tuna casserole out of the oven and dished it along with the mashed potatoes on plates and set them on the kitchen table.
She consciously relaxed her mouth as she said, “Let’s eat. Your father is still at the hospital.”
“What a shock,” Gilda said.
Gwendolyn gave Gilda her no-nonsense look. They all sat down without any further fuss.
They ate in silence until Oliver erupted with a protest. “Mother! This doesn’t taste like your casserole!”
Both sisters endorsed this assessment by nodding in unison. Gwendolyn, who had been eating in a distracted state, realized they were right. Investigating with her spoon, she discovered that instead of peas there were briny canned olives in the dish. She went over to the trash can and fished out the can she thought had been peas but clearly wasn’t. It had no label. She rushed down to the basement, followed by her children, and examined her well-stocked pantry, where she kept her canned goods arranged in alphabetical order. Not only were they in disarray, but most of their labels were ripped off. She was not amused, but her kids broke into giggles, soon joined by Eddie, who had emerged from elsewhere in the basement and added his distinctive chirping that sounded like it could be laughing,
“Come on, Mother,” Oliver said, “it’s not so bad. Now, every night will be like mystery dinner.”
Gwendolyn joined them in laughter.
That night, as she went through her ritual of removing makeup and moisturizing her arms and legs, she realized that the report, which she assumed was accurate given Gilda’s thoroughness, still disturbed her. She now knew that she had a monkey on her hands that most likely came from a South American jungle, had probably been traumatized from being removed too soon from his mother and therefore had emotional problems, and probably wasn’t happy about being a long way from home. The worst thought of all: He would no doubt be a very difficult creature to deal with, and she would have to do so until she was a very old woman.
She looked up from these self-ministrations to the mirror and wondered, at another future point, would she look back at this day—the day when Paul Stanley appeared at their back door and handed her the leash of a drunken monkey—and realize that this was when it all began to change?
She returned to rubbing olive oil on her legs. She was not at all happy about the slinging doo-doo part either.
Written by author Michael Seabaugh, Gwendolyn and Eddie starts its tale in 1957 and finishes in 2016, taking readers across seven decades of its fabulous protagonist, Gwendolyn, as she navigates through life with a capuchin monkey named Eddie. Tumbling into Gwendolyn's life as a drunken prize won at a game of poker by her equally intoxicated husband, Eddie the monkey quickly becomes an unlikely council to Gwendolyn as she experiences personal highs and lows. All this, set against a turbulent political background of homophobia, racism, and the movement for women's rights. As perfectly summarised by the author himself, Sabaugh writes, "the story of Gwendolyn and Eddie is ultimately about cages—the ones we are born into, those we construct for ourselves, and the ones we impose on those we love."
Coming in at 280 pages, cover to cover, Gwendolyn and Eddie is a well constructed book, with a plot that has lends itself to its two striking leads. Gwendolyn is far from perfect, however her relationship with an unpredictable monkey is both unusual and is what will keep readers hooked until the very end. Secondary characters also add three dimensional layers to the story, and often in areas that add greater insight into the actions of Gwendolyn and Eddie within the world they live in.
The story tackles many challenging topics, and demonstrates a careful level of research into the scene setting and political turbulence of America in the latter half of the twentieth century. And while some elements of the story follow a predictable path, there still maintains many twists and turns to engage adult readers of all forms of contemporary fiction set in a bygone age.
As an author, Seabaugh's skill with the pen radiates across every chapter, making Gwendolyn and Eddie a must read for 2025. With a beautiful cover to match, there is little to find fault with when it comes to this charming story of a woman and an excitable monkey. It is a novel packed full of bold and colourful personalities, and the unexpected antics that come with it.
AEB Reviews