Dear Debbie
49 pages • 1-hour read
Freida McFaddenDear Debbie
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Chapters 17-36Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section contains discussion of graphic violence, sexual harassment, and a reference to disordered eating.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Cooper”
Cooper and his colleague Jesse work out together after work, and Cooper finds himself distracted by a beautiful woman. He debates telling Debbie the truth about being fired. Cooper invites Jesse to the shooting range the following weekend. As he is leaving, the beautiful woman winks at him. The front desk clerk pointedly tells Cooper that his wife was at the gym earlier that afternoon.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Debbie”
Debbie visits Coach Pike with a tray of brownies. She is immediately uncomfortable with Pike’s leering stares. Pike reveals that he dropped Izzy from the team because she wasn’t fast enough. He insists that she needs to lose weight, and suggests that Debbie should also lose weight. Debbie leaves, furious, and decides to make one more stop at the school before going home.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Cooper”
That night, Cooper tells Debbie that his partnership was rejected, but does not tell her that he lost his job. Debbie says that the photo shoot was a success and that her day was uneventful. Cooper reflects on how beautiful his wife is and how lucky he feels to have her. Feeling guilty, he makes an excuse to leave. As he leaves, he sends a message and turns off Findly, the location-tracking app Debbie wrote for the family.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Harley”
Harley receives a text from a man asking to come over, and quickly agrees. As she gets ready, she mentally compares herself to the man’s wife. The man Harley believes is Cooper enters Harley’s apartment, and Harley asks when Debbie expects him back. Privately, she recalls how they met at the gym where she works. As they have sex, Harley imagines the day when Cooper leaves Debbie for her.
Chapter 21 Summary
Cooper tells Harley that he has been miserable in his marriage for years and that he is not sexually attracted to his wife. Harley feels confident that Cooper loves her and that he will leave his wife soon. She remembers how she befriended Debbie in order to learn more about Cooper, who has no social media presence. Harley hopes that Debbie discovers the affair, so that she and Cooper can be together.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Debbie”
While waiting for Cooper to return, Debbie notices Zane and Lexi arguing on the porch. Zane shows Lexi something on his phone that makes her angry. Debbie interrupts as the fight turns physical, and Zane leaves. When Lexi shows interest in spending time with her mother, Debbie asks about her relationship with Zane. Lexi immediately shuts down and goes to her room.
Chapter 23 Summary
Cooper comes home after two hours. Debbie asks about his location on Findly, and he explains that he was driving in areas without reception.
Cooper tearfully admits that he lost his job. Debbie is shocked that his boss, Ken Bryant, would accept his resignation, given his value to the company. She does not reveal that she also lost her job, but privately vows to find another one. She promises Cooper that Ken will regret his decision.
Chapter 24 Summary: “From Dear Debbie Drafts File”
A letter writer complains that her husband’s snoring makes it impossible for her to sleep. Debbie suggests that the husband exercise more, drink less, and sleep on his side. If he is unwilling to try these measures, Debbie suggests that the wife smother him in his sleep to permanently end the snoring.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Debbie”
Debbie sneaks out in the middle of the night, having drugged her husband. It is revealed that Debbie’s garden contains opium poppies and ipecacuanha, a flower which can be used to make a powerful emetic.
Debbie plants the Japanese beetle trap refills in Jo Dolan’s garden, then drives to Coach Pike’s house. She finds his spare key and prepares to enter the house, hoping he ate the drugged brownies.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Cooper”
Cooper wakes in the middle of the night feeling as if he has been drugged. He is confused not to find Debbie in bed with him. He reflects on how strange she has been over the last six months and laments the distance between them.
Cooper searches for Debbie on Findly, the location-sharing app she wrote, and copies down the address. He vows to confess his secret to her, then passes out.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Debbie”
Debbie wakes early the next morning and leaves without talking to Cooper. She drives to Ken Bryant’s house to confront him about Cooper’s job. When Ken reluctantly agrees to talk to her, she pulls a gun on him. Debbie privately acknowledges that this is an escalation of her previous behavior, including cutting her neighbor’s electricity and poisoning her book club friends. She decides to proceed with her plan.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Cooper”
Cooper wakes to hear Debbie showering. He answers a call on her phone from Garrett, the married editor-in-chief of the Hingham Household. Garrett accuses Debbie of hacking the newspaper’s website to play footage of him having sex with his secretary, Sierra. Cooper defends Debbie to Garrett, but privately asks if she is responsible. She denies it.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Debbie”
Debbie blocks Garrett’s number and makes pancakes for her family. When Izzy refuses, Debbie worries that Coach Pike’s comments have given her an eating disorder. Zane arrives to take Lexi to school, but Lexi asks Debbie to send him away. Zane leaves, but Debbie worries that he will be back.
Chapter 30 Summary: “From Dear Debbie Drafts File”
A letter writer complains that she can’t stand her daughter’s boyfriend, describing a boy similar to Zane. Debbie suggests the writer invite the boy over for dinner in the hopes of getting to know him better. If the dinner doesn’t change things, Debbie suggests cutting his brake lines.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Debbie”
Debbie drives her daughters to school, grateful for the chance to spend time with them. She wishes she could go back in time and hug herself at their age. She refers obscurely to a painful event that occurred during her sophomore year of college.
A police car is at the school when they arrive, and Debbie parks to investigate, although she knows why they are there.
Chapter 32 Summary
Another mother explains to Debbie that an anonymous tipster claimed there was a camera in the girls’ locker room. As the mothers discuss who could be responsible, police emerge from the school with Coach Pike. Coach Pike insists that he didn’t place the camera and that his phone has been hacked. Debbie lies and says that she once caught Coach Pike looking at players inappropriately.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Cooper”
Cooper wakes to find that Debbie has burned the pancakes she left him. At work, he learns that Ken has taken a fishing trip and will be gone the rest of the week. Jesse asks about Cooper’s home life and suggests that Debbie is unnecessarily jealous. He reveals that Ken asked him to water his plants while he is gone. Cooper is surprised by Ken’s absence, but assumes he’ll be back soon.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Debbie”
Debbie spends the morning in her garden, ensuring she has fresh supplies of opium. She decides to text Harley to meet for lunch, grateful to have a friend. As she leaves, she sees the Home Gardening reporters refusing to photograph Jo Dolan’s garden. Debbie feels gratified that the trap refills attracted the Japanese beetles to ruin the garden, and hopes Jo never finds them.
Chapter 35 Summary
Debbie drives to Harley’s apartment, which reminds her of the apartment she had before she was married to Cooper. Inside, she spots a man’s oversized t-shirt, which Harley claims she sleeps in. Debbie recognizes the smell of sweat and cologne on the shirt. Suddenly, she loses her appetite.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Harley”
Harley debates whether to tell Cooper that his wife found his shirt in her apartment. She admits to herself that she wanted Debbie to find the shirt, despite the fact that they are friends. She probes Debbie for information about her marriage, but Debbie remains quiet. Harley determines to get Cooper for herself.
Chapters 17-36 Analysis
In this section of Dear Debbie, the chapters containing discarded column drafts begin to speak directly to Debbie’s personal life, deepening the text’s exploration of The Danger of Secrecy in Relationships. As the line between Debbie’s personal life and her imagination begins to blur, the violence of the drafts begins to leak into her real life. Chapter 24 contains a letter from a woman complaining that her husband’s snoring makes sleep impossible. Debbie’s draft suggests that the letter writer encourage “regular exercise” (115) and “weight loss” (115) for her husband to solve the problem. This advice closely mirrors the experience of Debbie’s husband Cooper, who has been able to “get back in shape” (84) after many years as a result of visiting the gym “at least three times per week” (84). The resonance between Debbie’s advice and her husband’s experience suggests that Debbie draws from her own life while drafting her letters.
However, Debbie’s draft letters always end in violence, and the novel suggests that Debbie might begin acting on these violent impulses. The draft in Chapter 24 ends with Debbie suggesting that the letter writer kill her husband if losing weight doesn’t stop his snoring. The very next chapter begins with Debbie waking to the sound of Cooper “snoring softly” (116) in bed beside her. The revelation that Debbie has drugged her husband with opium harvested from her garden echoes the violence of Debbie’s letter in the previous chapter.
The resonances between the draft and Debbie’s relationship with her own husband suggest that her violent fantasies are close to becoming a reality. This pattern repeats in Chapter 30, which contains a letter from a woman who “can’t stand” (141) her daughter’s boyfriend. The woman’s description of the boyfriend’s “attitude problem” (141) closely echoes Debbie’s opinion of Lexi’s boyfriend Zane, whom she describes as “surly as they come” (16). Debbie’s suggestion that the letter writer cut the boyfriend’s break lines foreshadows Debbie’s later treatment of Zane, when she will arrange for his car crash into the school.
In this section of the novel, it is revealed that Debbie’s friend Harley believes she is having an affair with her husband Cooper. However, there are suggestions from the beginning that Harley and Cooper’s relationship is not what it seems. The chapters narrated by Cooper suggest that he is not only in love with his wife but actively sexually attracted to her. Despite Debbie’s self-deprecating description of her body, Cooper insists that “she looks great in everything” and that she is “a woman I’d never be able to get out of my head” (94). He describes meeting her as “a bolt of lightning” (94), and insists that his feelings have not changed. Cooper’s narration suggests that he is dedicated to his wife and still finds her sexually attractive.
In Harley’s chapters, however, the man who presents himself as “Cooper” offers an entirely different perspective. He tells Harley that he and Debbie “are like strangers who are forced to live together” (101) and that he has been “sleeping in the guest room for years” (102). This suggests that Cooper is not sexually or emotionally connected to his wife. As a result, Harley believes that “he doesn’t love Debbie anymore” (102), and she begins to orchestrate opportunities for Debbie to discover the affair. The disconnect between Cooper’s narration and Harley’s suggests that something in their relationship is not what it seems. It will later be revealed that Harley’s “Cooper” is not Cooper at all, but his coworker Jesse—Debbie’s unsettled reaction to finding the man’s shirt in Harley’s home is therefore not because she recognizes it as Cooper’s, but because she recognizes Jesse’s scent. Harley’s assumptions that “Cooper” is who he says he is and Debbie’s reaction to the shirt thus create misdirection in the narrative, attempting to deceive the reader into misinterpreting what is really going on.
The development of the character of Coach Pike in this section reflects the novel’s thematic interest in Misogyny and Attempts to Control Women’s Bodies. Coach Pike feels like his role as coach entitles him to control the bodies of the teenage girls on his soccer team. When confronted about asking Izzy to lose weight, Pike explains that “nobody wants to watch a bunch of chubby girls running around the soccer field” (91) and that the sight of overweight players “isn’t going to make the crowd happy” (91). Pike’s explanation suggests that he believes the primary job of the soccer players is to be attractive to spectators. This perspective reflects his belief that society is entitled to control women’s bodies from a young age. Pike’s insistence on skinny soccer players is hypocritical given the fact that he himself is “in poor shape” (89), with his coaching uniform barely stretching “over the folds of his belly” (89). Pike’s physical appearance highlights that he does not bother to conform to his own idealized standards, suggesting that he is interested in control rather than pure athleticism.
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