A pivotal moment in young Edgar’s maturation comes that late autumn night when he sees his uncle and father locked in a brutish fight, “their arms crooked around each other’s necks like wrestlers” (113). Familial conflict on this scale is new to the boy. Much as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet or in Disney’s The Lion King—a re-imagining of Hamlet that may be more familiar to pop culture enthusiasts—the defining psychological tension in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle centers on the unresolved conflict between two very powerful but very different brothers. At stake here is not a kingdom but a business empire, the work of a family to create a revolutionary kennel.

When Claude decides as a teenager that the family business is not for him, and that breeding dogs could not define the reach of his world, Gar emerges as the stolid and reliable brother. Gar manages the business with savvy acumen, creating an international network of contacts as part of his bold vision in dog breeding: “Edgar’s father was more interested in what the dogs choose to do, a predilection he’d acquired from his own father” (21). His own family includes an emotionally fragile wife—the product of the foster care system—and a son with a speech disability.