Cheryl’s stepfather. A kind, hardworking carpenter several years Bobbi’s junior, Eddie was the one to instill in Cheryl and her siblings a love of nature and the outdoors when they were still young children by taking them on camping trips and building them a rural home in the Minnesota Northwoods. Though Eddie nurses his wife Bobbi through her illness and serves as a source of support to Cheryl, after Bobbi dies, Cheryl is unable to stop Eddie from drifting away. Soon, he marries a new woman with children of her own and remains emotionally closed-off from Cheryl and her other siblings in spite of their shared inability to cope with the loss of their beloved mother. Together, Eddie, Leif, and Karen represent one of the novel’s most potent themes: loss, grief, and distance.