Saint Maybe (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Anne Tyler
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The 1960’s to the 1980’s
- Setting: Baltimore, Maryland
- Genres: Long fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: 1960’s, 1970’s, Child rearing or parenting, Suicide, Gender roles, Guilt, 1980’s, Brothers, Single parents or single-parent families, Duty, Death or dying, Baltimore, Sacrifice
- Locales: Baltimore, MD
Characters Discussed
Ian Bedloe, the protagonist, the son of Bee and Doug Bedloe, optimistic parents of the ideal American family. Ian cannot reconcile life’s reality with his family’s rosy views. He tells his elder brother Danny that Danny’s wife Lucy is being unfaithful and that “their” new baby is no more Danny’s than are Lucy’s other two children, by her first husband. When Danny dies in a car wreck immediately afterward, followed quickly by Lucy’s death by an overdose of sleeping pills, Ian blames himself for Danny and Lucy’s “suicides” and orphaning...
[The entire page is 877 words long]

