The Book of Two Ways shuttles between Boston and the Egyptian desert, following a cast bound by love, loss, and the pull of roads not taken. At its heart is a love triangle that spans years and continents, filtered through themes of Choices and Alternate Paths and The Past's Influence on the Present. These characters collide and separate as they weigh passion against duty and memory against the lives they’ve built.
Main Characters
Dawn Edelstein
A former Egyptology prodigy turned Boston death doula, Dawn is the novel’s anchor and moral center, guiding others through their endings even as she questions her own beginnings. After surviving a plane crash in the Prologue, she detours to Egypt instead of returning home, compelled to confront the unfinished life she once shared with Wyatt and the stable marriage she has with Brian. Her intellect and empathy are matched by a deep, unquiet doubt, as she weighs the safety of family against the exhilaration of her academic past—and the secrets that bind them. Dawn’s choice reverberates through her relationships with her husband, her teenage daughter, and the man she left behind, a crossroads explored in the Full Book Summary.
Wyatt Armstrong
Brilliant, charming, and a touch arrogant, Wyatt embodies the life Dawn walked away from: high-stakes scholarship, banter-fueled intimacy, and the relentless chase for a lost tomb. As a leading figure in Yale Egyptology—once under the tutelage of their mentor, Ian Dumphries—he has built prestige and purpose, yet his emotional compass still points toward Dawn. His fiancée, Anya Dailey, bankrolls his dig and represents the secure future he has constructed, even as his past resurfaces in the form of both Dawn and a daughter he didn’t know existed. Wyatt’s arc moves from single-minded pursuit of the past to an unexpected reckoning with fatherhood and the possibility of a new kind of legacy.
Brian Edelstein
A kind, steady quantum physicist, Brian symbolizes the life Dawn chose: a home in Boston, a marriage built on solace after grief, and the daily rituals of parenting. His fascination with multiverse theory mirrors the book’s structure, offering a scientific lens on the idea that different choices create branching realities. When a boundary-blurring connection with his postdoc, Gita, exposes fractures in his marriage, Brian must confront what love requires—honesty, humility, and sometimes letting go. His most profound act is one of selfless devotion: loving Meret as his daughter regardless of biology, and giving Dawn the space to decide who she wants to be.
Supporting Characters
Meret Edelstein
Meret, the bright and perceptive teenage daughter at the story’s center, personifies the collision of Dawn’s two worlds. She inherits Brian’s love of science while contending with insecurity and the strain of her parents’ unraveling. When her true paternity surfaces, Meret must rebuild her sense of self and forge new bonds with both the father who raised her and the father she never knew.
Winifred 'Win' Morse
A quick-witted, pragmatic artist facing terminal ovarian cancer, Win becomes Dawn’s client and mirror, a living reminder that unfinished business can define a life. Her plea to reconnect with former lover Thane Bernard—and her regrets about abandoning her art—spurs Dawn to confront her own unresolved past. The intimacy of their doula-client relationship shapes Dawn’s choices and underscores the novel’s meditation on meaning at the end of life.
Dawn's Mother
Seen through memory, Dawn’s mother is a stoic, superstitious Irish presence whose secret battle with ovarian cancer remade her daughter’s life. Being with her as she died is what drew Dawn to end-of-life care and pulled her away from Egypt. Her regrets—in particular about a loved one dying alone—become the ethical blueprint for Dawn’s vocation.
Minor Characters
- Ian Dumphries: The formidable Yale mentor who recognized Dawn and Wyatt’s talent and stoked their rivalry, shaping both their scholarship and their chemistry.
- Felix Morse: Win’s devoted husband, navigating anticipatory grief with tenderness as he supports her quest for closure.
- Kieran: Dawn’s younger brother, now a neurosurgeon; he’s the Boston anchor who reminds Dawn of the family she fought to protect after their mother’s death.
- Gita: Brian’s postdoc whose blurred boundaries ignite a marital crisis, forcing Brian and Dawn to face what’s been left unsaid.
- Anya Dailey: Wyatt’s wealthy, aristocratic fiancée and expedition benefactor, emblematic of the polished life he has built without Dawn.
- Dig Site Crew (Harbi, Alberto, Joe): Wyatt’s team in Egypt; their banter, expertise, and outsider observations ground the archaeological storyline and register the shock of Dawn’s return.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
The central triangle—Dawn, Wyatt, and Brian—pits passion against stability and past against present. Dawn and Wyatt share a combustible blend of intellectual sparring and desire, forged in the heat of fieldwork and the thrill of discovery; their bond feels elemental, but it was severed by circumstance and grief. Dawn and Brian, by contrast, grew together through consolation and routine, building a life that is gentle, durable, and quietly fraying under the weight of secrecy. Wyatt and Brian, two versions of a possible future, are less direct opponents than embodiments of fundamentally different value systems—adventure versus home, wonder versus constancy.
Family dynamics deepen these tensions. Dawn and Meret struggle under the pressure of concealed truths, yet their bond strengthens as Dawn stops partitioning her lives and chooses honesty. Brian and Meret remain steady and tender; his love does not depend on DNA, and their history together provides ballast when everything else tilts. Wyatt and Meret begin with awkwardness and curiosity, then move toward a sincere connection that reframes the triangle as a potential blended family rather than a zero-sum game.
Professional worlds amplify personal stakes. In Egypt, the dig becomes a crucible where old habits reemerge—Dawn and Wyatt’s shared language of texts, tombs, and teasing restores intimacy even as it threatens to upend Boston. In Boston, Brian’s lab and Gita’s presence expose vulnerabilities in a marriage that has relied on avoidance. Win sits at the intersection of these realms: through her candid acceptance of death and her insistence on closure, she catalyzes truth-telling across all relationships, reminding the cast that endings can be chosen with as much intention as beginnings.