Explore the real-world places that appear in Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Newark Liberty International Airport, Lacey and John Stillman's Home, Edward's New Jersey Middle School, Shay's House — The Fence Between Yards, Colorado Rocky Mountains — Crash Site and 8 more.
Terminal B, Newark, NJ — Departure gate for Flight 2977
Newark Liberty is where the novel truly begins. The Adler family — Jane, Bruce, Jordan, and twelve-year-old Edward — check in for their cross-country flight to Los Angeles, leaving their New York life behind for a fresh start in California. Edward watches the other passengers board, absorbing impressions of the strangers whose lives will become entangled with his memory: the brash businessman Benjamin Stillman, the pregnant Veronica, the wounded veteran Mark Lassio. The ordinary bustle of departure — luggage tags, boarding passes, hurried coffee — is rendered with devastating irony, since readers know none of these rituals of the living will be completed.
Newark Liberty International Airport opened in 1928 as one of America's first major commercial airports. It was the busiest airport in the world in the 1930s. It served as a key hub for transcontinental flight throughout the jet age and today handles tens of millions of passengers annually as part of the Port Authority's tri-state airport system.
Newark Liberty International Airport continues to operate as a major international hub, served by United Airlines as its primary carrier. Terminal B, from which many transcontinental flights depart, was significantly renovated in the 2010s. The airport remains a major northeastern gateway for cross-country flights.
Visit: Newark Liberty International Airport (landmark)
Suburban Lefferts Corner, NJ — Edward's post-crash home
After the crash, Edward is taken in by his aunt Lacey and uncle John Shearson, his mother's sister and her husband, in their quiet New Jersey suburb. This house becomes the emotional center of the novel's present-day timeline. Lacey, who struggled with infertility, pours her grief and love into caring for Edward. John, more reserved, tries to maintain a sense of normalcy. Edward sleeps, wanders, and slowly begins to reconstitute a self in these rooms, haunted by dreams of the crash. The house is the place where Edward receives the letters from victims' families that will eventually change his understanding of his own survival.
The suburban communities of northern New Jersey developed rapidly after World War II as families sought affordable homes outside of New York City. Towns like these became archetypes of postwar American domestic life, characterized by modest homes, quiet streets, and strong community ties.
Northern New Jersey's suburban towns remain densely populated residential communities. Many have seen demographic shifts since the postwar era, but the fundamental character of quiet streets and family homes persists. The area is well-served by NJ Transit commuter rail lines into New York City.
Lefferts Corner, NJ — Edward's painful return to ordinary life
Edward's return to school is one of the novel's most excruciating passages. He is the boy who survived, a celebrity of tragedy, and his classmates treat him as something between a ghost and a curiosity. He befriends Shay, his neighbor and eventual closest companion, who becomes his lifeline to the ordinary world of adolescence. The school hallways, lunchroom, and classrooms are sites of Edward's profound alienation — he sits in desks, answers attendance calls, and turns in homework while carrying the weight of 183 deaths. His teachers are unsure whether to treat him as fragile or as a normal student.
Public middle schools in New Jersey are administered by local school districts under the oversight of the New Jersey Department of Education. The state has historically invested heavily in public education, and suburban Essex and Union County schools consistently rank among the state's stronger districts.
New Jersey public schools continue to serve their communities, with growing awareness of student mental health needs. Many districts now employ school counselors and social workers specifically trained to support students experiencing trauma and grief, a field that has expanded significantly since the early 2000s.
Lefferts Corner, NJ — Where Edward and Shay build their friendship
The fence between Lacey and John's yard and the home of their neighbors — where Shay lives — becomes the novel's most tender recurring space. Edward and Shay talk across the fence, trade secrets, and slowly forge the friendship that anchors Edward's recovery. Shay is irreverent, funny, and utterly unintimidated by Edward's status as a crash survivor. She sees him as a person rather than a symbol. Their conversations in the yard, sometimes late at night when Edward can't sleep, are among the novel's most quietly beautiful scenes, capturing the tentative, vital work of grief being slowly metabolized by human connection.
The suburban backyard fence is a quintessential feature of postwar American residential architecture, both a boundary and a meeting point. In American literature and culture, the backyard fence has long served as a symbol of the tension between privacy and community, isolation and neighborliness.
Suburban New Jersey neighborhoods retain their characteristic mix of adjacent properties and informal social life. The kind of over-the-fence friendship that Edward and Shay develop remains a living tradition in communities where families have known each other for years.
Rocky Mountain region, Colorado — Where the plane went down
The crash itself occurs over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and the site haunts every page of the novel even when it is not directly described. Edward, the sole survivor, is found in the wreckage on a mountain slope. The stark, indifferent beauty of the Rockies — snow, silence, pine — contrasts grotesquely with the horror of the crash. In later chapters, the crash site acquires an almost sacred quality: it is the place where 183 people died, where Edward's family ended, and where, paradoxically, Edward's new life began. He carries the mountain inside him for the rest of the novel.
The Rocky Mountains of Colorado have been the site of several aviation disasters throughout the 20th century due to the dramatic elevation changes, unpredictable weather, and complex terrain. The mountains rise to over 14,000 feet at numerous peaks and present serious navigational challenges for commercial aviation.
The central Colorado Rockies remain one of America's most dramatic wilderness landscapes. The region is protected by several national forests and wilderness areas. Aspen, Vail, and other resort communities lie nearby, but vast stretches of the crash-site terrain remain remote and accessible only by foot or backcountry travel.
Visit: White River National Forest (park)
LAX, Los Angeles, CA — The destination that was never reached
Los Angeles International Airport is the phantom destination that structures the novel's before-crash timeline. The Adler family was moving to Los Angeles — Bruce had accepted a new job, and the family was beginning again. Jordan, Edward's older brother, was excited about the California life ahead. For each of the passengers, LAX represented arrival, conclusion, beginning — all the things a destination means. The airport exists in the novel as an absence, a place that was supposed to happen, a future that the crash foreclosed. When Edward eventually makes his way to California later in the story, the approach to Los Angeles carries the full weight of this thwarted arrival.
Los Angeles International Airport opened in 1930 as Mines Field and became LAX in 1941. The distinctive Theme Building, built in 1961, became an iconic symbol of the Jet Age. LAX is the fourth busiest airport in the world by passenger count and serves as the primary gateway to Southern California.
LAX is currently undergoing a multi-billion dollar modernization program, including a new automated people mover connecting terminals to a consolidated rental car facility and transit connections. The airport handles over 80 million passengers annually and remains a global hub for Pacific Rim and domestic travel.
Visit: Los Angeles International Airport (landmark)
Manhattan, New York, NY — Edward's life before the flight
In the novel's before-crash flashback chapters, the Adler family's New York City apartment is the world Edward knows and loves. He shares a room with Jordan, his older brother and closest companion. The apartment is filled with the particular warmth of a family that works — Jane and Bruce's marriage is loving, the boys are close, daily life hums along. These scenes are rendered with aching specificity: the smell of the kitchen, the sound of Jordan's voice, the particular light of a Manhattan afternoon. They are the paradise against which all of Edward's post-crash existence is measured.
The Upper West Side of Manhattan has been a family-oriented residential neighborhood since the late 19th century. It developed as a middle-class alternative to the more fashionable Upper East Side, characterized by prewar apartment buildings, Riverside Park, and proximity to Columbia University and cultural institutions.
The Upper West Side remains one of New York City's most desirable residential neighborhoods, home to Lincoln Center, the American Museum of Natural History, and Central Park's western edge. Prewar apartment buildings continue to command premium rents, and the neighborhood retains its reputation for intellectual and cultural life.
Financial District, Manhattan, NY — The tycoon's world
Benjamin Stillman, the wealthy and imperious businessman aboard the flight, is one of the novel's most fully realized passenger portraits. His Wall Street life — the power, the deals, the accumulated wealth — is rendered in sharp detail in the before-crash chapters. Stillman is a man who has defined himself entirely by success and acquisition, and the chapters aboard the plane force him to reckon with what that life has cost him. His correspondence becomes part of the cache of letters that Edward eventually receives, letters in which Stillman's hard exterior cracks and something more human struggles to emerge.
Wall Street and the Financial District of Manhattan have been the center of American finance since the late 18th century. The New York Stock Exchange, founded in 1792, anchors a neighborhood that has seen enormous change but remains the symbolic heart of American capitalism.
The Financial District has transformed significantly since 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis. While major banks and financial firms still maintain offices, the neighborhood has increasingly become a mixed-use district with residential buildings, hotels, and restaurants. The area around the World Trade Center site draws millions of visitors annually.
Visit: Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange (landmark)
Helmand Province, Afghanistan — The veteran's backstory
Mark Lassio, the injured veteran aboard the flight, is returning home from Afghanistan when he boards the doomed plane. His chapters cycle between the present of the flight and memories of his service — the heat, the dust, the particular violence and camaraderie of the war. He carries both physical wounds and the subtler damage of combat, and the plane becomes a kind of liminal space where he processes what he has survived and what he has lost. Napolitano uses his story to explore the question of survival itself: what it means to come through violence intact, and whether 'intact' is even the right word.
The United States military presence in Afghanistan began following the September 11, 2001 attacks and lasted until August 2021, making it the longest war in American history. Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan was one of the most contested regions, the site of intense fighting between NATO forces and Taliban insurgents throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
Following the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, Afghanistan returned to Taliban control. Helmand Province remains one of the country's least stable regions. Hundreds of thousands of American veterans of the Afghanistan war continue to navigate physical and psychological wounds from their service.
San Francisco, CA — The pregnant passenger's origin
Veronica, the young woman who has discovered she is unexpectedly pregnant, is one of the most emotionally resonant passenger portraits in the novel. Her chapters aboard the plane are consumed with the question of what to do — whether to keep the pregnancy, whether to tell the father, what kind of future she can imagine. She is flying to Los Angeles to make decisions, to visit people, to think. The pregnancy she carries — a life within a life — gives her storyline a particular irony and weight. She writes a letter during the flight, one of many letters that will eventually find their way to Edward.
San Francisco has long been associated with countercultural movements and progressive social values, making it a fitting backdrop for a character grappling with an unexpected pregnancy outside of conventional expectations. The city's demographics shifted dramatically during the dot-com boom of the 1990s and 2000s, with rising costs displacing many longtime residents.
San Francisco remains one of America's most expensive and culturally vibrant cities. The ongoing tensions between its progressive social traditions and its role as a hub of tech-industry wealth have defined much of its recent identity. The Bay Area continues to draw young professionals from across the country.
Northern New Jersey — Where families of victims gather
Lacey begins attending a grief support group for families of the crash victims, and these sessions are rendered with painful honesty. The support group — held in a nondescript room in a community center or church basement — brings together people whose only common bond is catastrophic loss. Lacey struggles to situate herself in a group where she is both a grieving sister and the guardian of the sole survivor. The other parents, spouses, and siblings in the room carry their grief differently, and the group becomes a space where the novel explores how loss reshapes identity and relationship.
Grief support groups for aviation disaster families became formalized after several major crashes in the 1970s and 1980s. Organizations like the National Transportation Safety Board and the American Red Cross developed structured family assistance protocols following disasters, including peer support group facilitation.
Grief counseling and peer support groups for disaster survivors and their families are now standard components of disaster response in the United States. Many communities have ongoing bereavement groups hosted by hospitals, hospices, and religious organizations. Online grief communities have expanded access significantly.
Denver, CO — Nearest major hub to the crash site
Denver International Airport serves as the logistical center for the crash aftermath — the place where investigators, families, and emergency personnel converge in the immediate days after the disaster. For Edward, transported from the crash site and eventually connected with Lacey and John, Denver represents the first chapter of his survival: the hospital rooms, the federal investigators, the journalists gathering outside, the beginning of his life as 'the boy who survived.' The airport and city are where the world first learns Edward's name.
Denver International Airport opened in 1995, replacing Stapleton International Airport. Its dramatic white Teflon-coated roof, designed to evoke the Rocky Mountains, made it instantly iconic. The airport serves as the main hub connecting mountain Colorado to the national air network and handles over 60 million passengers annually.
Denver International Airport is the fifth busiest airport in the United States and continues to expand. The iconic tent-like terminal remains one of the most photographed airport structures in the world. The airport serves as a major hub for United Airlines and Frontier Airlines and offers direct service to hundreds of domestic and international destinations.
Visit: Denver International Airport (landmark)
Lefferts Corner, NJ — The hidden room or storage space at Lacey's house
One of the novel's most significant plot turns is Edward's discovery of the hundreds of letters that people have been sending him since the crash — letters from victims' families, from strangers moved by his survival, from people who simply needed to write to someone who had witnessed something incomprehensible. Lacey has been storing them without telling Edward, protecting him. When he finds them, it is a rupture in their relationship and simultaneously a gift: each letter is a portal into one of the lives lost on the plane. Reading them, Edward begins the work of understanding that his survival was not separate from those deaths but profoundly bound up with them.
The practice of writing to survivors of disasters has deep roots in American culture. Following major tragedies, survivors often receive enormous quantities of correspondence from strangers seeking connection or catharsis. This phenomenon has been documented following disasters from the sinking of the Titanic to the September 11 attacks.
In the internet age, the impulse to reach out to survivors and grieving families has migrated substantially to social media, but letter-writing to survivors persists, particularly in cases that capture broad public attention. Mental health advocates increasingly discuss both the comfort and the burden such correspondence can place on survivors.
More by Ann Napolitano: All Ann Napolitano books
Other nearby maps: Murderland: A Thousand Miles of Killing on the Highway by Caroline Fraser locations map