53 pages • 1 hour read
Linda HolmesEvvie Drake Starts Over
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Eveleth “Evvie” Ashton Drake
The book’s protagonist is Evvie, which rhymes with “Chevy” and is short for the city of Eveleth in Minnesota where Evvie’s mother Eileen was born. Evvie’s father Frank, a lobster fisherman in coastal Maine, raised Evvie after her mother deserted them when Evvie was eight. She is exceedingly bright, and people say she is attractive. Evvie is an excellent transcriber who types out data sent to her from various sources. She has lived her entire life in tiny, coastal Calcasset, Maine. Like virtually every other character in the book, the author gives little descriptive information about Evvie, apart from the fact that she thinks her legs look like tree trunks. The author does describe Evvie’s personal issues: she suffers from repressed emotions and does not feel free to express herself. As a result, no one really knows Evvie.
Evvie is a young widow who is probably in her early 30s. She was married to Tim Drake, her high school sweetheart. She followed him to college and waited for him while he was in medical school. Tim was the driving force in the relationship, making virtually all the significant choices; for instance, Evvie lives in the large two-story house Tim picked out. After months of wrestling with her decision, Evvie decides to leave Tim, who is emotionally abusive. The very afternoon she is loading her car to depart, she learns Tim has been in a fatal auto accident.
After a year in which Evvie is a reclusive widow, she takes in a boarder, Dean, who will live in the attached apartment, her favorite part of the house. She finds him quite attractive. Over the course of the year, she falls in love with him, and he falls for her. A former professional baseball player, Dean has a significant issue with his pitching that Evvie tries to alleviate, without success. Eventually, Evvie realizes she must deal with her own pent-up feelings before she can move forward and experience joy and freedom.
Dean Tenney
Originally from Colorado, where he was a boyhood friend of Evvie’s pal Andy, Dean is a celebrity owing to 11 years as a Major League Baseball pitcher. From his youth, Dean had only one goal—playing baseball—which he fulfilled, ending up three times in the World Series with the Yankees. Around the same time Tim died, Dean developed a condition called the “yips,” which refers to an athlete’s sudden inability to perform. Dean lost the ability to control his pitches. Many pundits and fans have taken to calling Dean “a head case,” since there seems to be no detectable physical problem responsible for this inability. Although he outwardly admits that he will never play again, he yearns and hopes that one day he can return to the mound.
Until his notoriety diminishes, Dean must avoid large groups of people if he is to live a peaceful life. His friend Andy suggests he move away from New York to Maine for a year and enjoy the little town of Calcasset. He tells Dean that his friend Evvie has an apartment in her home he can rent for a year.
Dean is unlike virtually every other character in that Holmes describes his appearance. The author does not detail his features all at once but spreads the descriptions out over a series of chapters, always expressing Evvie’s feelings when she sees his hair, eyes, height, muscular frame, the tattoo on his side, and other features Evvie observes closely.
Andy
Andy is Evvie’s platonic best friend and a divorced father of two girls, Rose and Lilly. Although they are extremely close emotionally and they find themselves hugging one another at every milestone of life, there is no physical relationship or attraction between them. Andy’s best male friend is his boyhood buddy Dean, with whom he has kept contact over the decades. Andy’s ex-wife, Lori, lives in Charleston, South Carolina. Periodically, she comes to Maine to spend time with her daughters.
Although some in Calcasset might assume Evvie and Andy have an ongoing sexual relationship, they merely support one another emotionally. When Lori left Andy, Evvie was there to help with the girls, who were very young at the time. Similarly, when Tim died, Andy came to care for Evvie and was by her side whenever she needed him throughout the following year. What Andy does not know is that Evvie intensely disliked her husband and was loading up her car to leave him when he perished. When Andy finds out Evvie was leaving town without saying a word to him, he feels betrayed.
Dr. Tim Drake
Tim, Evvie’s husband, dies in the first few pages of the narrative, though his past behavior continues to bedevil and control Evvie long after he is deceased. His abusive behavior toward Evvie would be a surprising, perhaps unbelievable, revelation to everyone in Calcasset, where Tim was roundly adored and admired. He seems to have been a hard-working, quality physician. As Evvie puts it, he was loved by everyone who did not live with him.
Tim was a golden boy from his high school days, where he was pampered and spoiled by his parents. He was bright and excelled in school, though his parents also paved the way for him to receive additional accolades he did not necessarily deserve. Tim was a charmer who swept Evvie off her feet. He never lost his ability to charm. He also had an aptitude for insults and demeaning behavior, which he unloaded solely on Evvie. Evvie and Tim seemed to understand that, were Tim to leave Calcasset and go to a larger, more prestigious community and clinic, he would be considered ordinary. This recognition apparently fueled much of the hostility he carried with him and used against Evvie.
