CHARACTER
The Story of Edgar Sawtelleby David Wroblewski

Almondine

Almondine

Quick Facts

Who They Are

From the first page written in her perspective, Almondine is more than a pet—she is the emotional instrument of the Sawtelle home. Born into a line bred for attentiveness and calm, she embodies the family’s ideal: a dog whose intelligence is inseparable from empathy. Her bond with Edgar becomes the novel’s clearest expression of the The Human-Animal Bond: a reciprocal, wordless intimacy that makes her Edgar’s voice, sentinel, and other half. Even as age grays her muzzle and stiffens her gait, Almondine’s watchfulness never dims; her gaze remains steady, and her purpose unshaken.

Personality & Traits

Almondine’s temperament blends gentleness with resolve. She is tuned to the rhythms of the house, yet decisive when protection is needed. Her “job” is self-chosen—upon recognizing Edgar’s silence, she appoints herself as his interpreter. Her physical grace gives way to caution as she ages, but caution never becomes fear; it crystallizes into care.

  • Profound loyalty: She shadows Edgar from infancy to adolescence, intervening physically when he’s in danger (rushing Epi in the kennel), and emotionally when he’s bereft after family losses.
  • Intuitive and intelligent: Almondine reads Edgar’s gestures, moods, and needs with near-human acuity, enabling a private language that underscores the theme of Language, Communication, and Silence.
  • Dutiful purpose: After realizing Edgar is mute, she “has a job”—alerting Trudy when Edgar cries silently and positioning herself as Edgar’s constant intermediary with the speaking world.
  • Cautious protector: Her caution defines her caregiving. She approaches crises calibrating proximity and force—evident when she edges close to Trudy and the infant, and when she chooses the precise violence needed to stop Epi.
  • Playful warmth: Despite burdened purpose, she remains affectionate and game-loving with Edgar, her “ridiculous grin” through the crib slats revealing a dog whose joy coexists with vigilance.

Character Journey

Almondine’s arc tracks the rise and unraveling of the Sawtelle world. As a young dog, she senses a hidden change in the house before Edgar’s birth, then crosses an invisible threshold from training to vocation when she meets the silent infant. Their bond matures into a seamless duet—she reads what Edgar cannot say; he trusts what she cannot say. After Gar’s death, Almondine becomes ballast for Trudy and Edgar, absorbing the family’s shock and channeling it into presence. The kennel’s sanctity frays as Claude insinuates himself into the workshop, and Almondine’s wary tolerance there registers a moral confusion the humans struggle to name. When Edgar runs, the bond that organized her life collapses. Age and arthritis slow her body, but not the compulsion to find him. Her death on the road—searching, still on duty—echoes the novel’s aching meditations on Family and Legacy and Grief and Loss: the family’s center cannot hold, and the soul of the kennel is lost trying to restore it.

Key Relationships

  • Edgar Sawtelle: Almondine is Edgar’s mirror and medium. She translates his silence into action, alerting others when he needs help and shaping a private language that allows Edgar to be fully known. Their reciprocity—her watchfulness for his trust—creates the novel’s most complete portrait of love.
  • Trudy Sawtelle: With Trudy, Almondine is both helper and comforter. She bridges mother and child in infancy and remains a steady presence through Trudy’s bereavements, offering companionship that eases the home’s emptiest rooms.
  • Gar Sawtelle: Almondine shares with Gar the kennel’s ethic: patience, routine, and reverence for the dogs. Her presence at moments of family sorrow (like the stillborn’s burial) underscores her role as a silent participant in the Sawtelles’ rites, and her grief after Gar’s death is a felt absence in the home.
  • Claude Sawtelle: Curiosity shades into distrust as Claude enters the family’s orbit. Almondine’s eventual acceptance of him in the workshop reads to Edgar as betrayal—not because Almondine changes, but because her duty to balance the household collides with the moral disorder Claude brings.

Defining Moments

Almondine’s life is punctuated by brief, decisive acts that define her character: she notices, chooses, and commits.

  • Sensing Edgar’s arrival: Before his birth, she feels the house “keeping a secret,” pacing rooms to locate what she cannot see. Why it matters: It frames her intuition as nearly preternatural and sets her orientation toward caretaking even before there is someone to guard.
  • Becoming Edgar’s “voice”: When infant Edgar cries without sound, Almondine alerts Trudy and positions herself near the child. Why it matters: This inaugurates her vocation—she becomes the conduit through which Edgar’s needs reach the speaking world.
  • The fight in the kennel: When Epi clamps onto Edgar’s arm, Almondine intervenes instantly, aiming to blind Epi so she will release him. Why it matters: The moment reveals Almondine’s calibrated ferocity—violence as a precise tool in defense of her boy.
  • Acceptance of Claude in the workshop: Almondine’s cautious allowance of Claude’s presence, read by Edgar as disloyalty, exposes the rift between her role as stabilizer and Edgar’s moral intuition. Why it matters: It complicates her loyalty, showing that duty to household harmony can clash with loyalty to one person.
  • Death on the road: Old, arthritic, and disoriented by Edgar’s absence, she wanders in search of him and is struck by a truck. Why it matters: Her end is true to her life—still on guard, still in motion toward Edgar—and marks the final fracture of the Sawtelle family’s order.

Essential Quotes

Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her. All that winter and all through the spring, Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find it.

This line establishes Almondine as a perceiver of atmospheres. The “secret” frames her intuition as narrative engine: she reads the household like text, foreshadowing her role as the first to apprehend Edgar’s arrival and needs.

And so Almondine gathered her legs beneath her and broke her stay. She crossed the room and paused beside the chair, and she became in that moment, and was ever after, a cautious dog, for suddenly it seemed important that she be right in this... She drew her tongue along his mother’s face, just once, very deliberately, then stepped back.

Here, caution is not timidity but deliberation. The single, purposeful gesture inaugurates her lifelong method—get close enough, do exactly enough, then withdraw—defining a caregiving style rooted in restraint and precision.

This will be his earliest memory. Red light, morning light. High ceiling canted overhead. Lazy click of toenails on wood. Between the honey-colored slats of the crib a whiskery muzzle slides forward until its cheeks pull back and a row of dainty front teeth bare themselves in a ridiculous grin.

The prose fuses Edgar’s sensory world with Almondine’s presence, making her the first image in his autobiography. The “ridiculous grin” softens her guardianship with humor and warmth, showing that safety and joy arrive together.

At that moment, Almondine had one idea: to blind Epi.

Stripped of sentiment, this thought reveals her capacity for decisive, targeted violence when duty demands it. It shocks because it’s lucid, not feral—an ethical calculus in a crisis that protects Edgar at any cost.