Handle With Care

Charlotte is the novel’s second main protagonist, which emphasizes that Handle with Care is ultimately a novel about the theme of The Power and Shortcomings of Motherhood and Maternal Love. Charlotte is a pastry chef and baker who uses food as a way to show affection for the other characters, and the recipes found throughout the novel are written by her and are dedicated to Willow and other people with OI. Charlotte is also a baked goods history buff and wants to name her first bakery Syllabub because it’s “the oldest English dessert” (103). Baking is strongly tied to Charlotte’s identity, to the point Piper says it’s her “calling.”

While Charlotte experiences many traumas throughout the novel, her character remains relatively static throughout. Sean often calls her “A martyr […] No one’s ever as good as [she is] when it comes to taking care of Willow” (203). She remains perseverant throughout the novel, ultimately winning the lawsuit to provide for Willow in spite of the suit’s effects on her relationships with her best friend and her husband. She epitomizes the “mother bear” stereotype and will fiercely protect her children. However, her maternal instincts have limits; in her focus on Willow, she overlooks the mental health of her older daughter, Amelia.

Sean, the biological father of Willow and stepfather of Amelia, serves as Charlotte’s parental foil. While Charlotte is hypervigilant regarding Willow, “Sean was the risk taker when it came to” Willow (71). Due to his job, Sean is less present for his children than Charlotte.

Sean is a police officer, and his work negatively affects his family life. Police officers are often stereotyped as selfless heroes, but Sean does not fulfill that role for his family. He often uses his badge as a way to gain power in situations where he feels powerless. When he is arrested for suspected child abuse, he mentions he’s a police officer multiple times. Later when he meets with Marin and Ramirez to discuss the lawsuit for the first time, he goes out of his way to correct Ramirez on his correct job title, saying, “It’s Sergeant O’Keefe, actually” (47).

Several times in the novel, Sean takes out his anger and frustration physically. He punches walls, uses excessive force with a teenage suspect, and sexually assaults Charlotte in an attempt to “punish” her. He almost always tries to repair the violence he’s done by being overly generous. For example, after moving out of the house, he buys all the baked goods Charlotte and the girls put at the end of the driveway, giving them money without telling them who it was from.

Amelia is Willow’s 13-year-old half-sister. She uses humor as a way to deflect people from noticing her problems. After the novel’s inciting incident at Disney World, Amelia develops bulimia and uses self-harm as a way to cope with her family situation. Amelia tries to gain attention from her parents, who are preoccupied, through acts like dying her hair blue. Her isolation and mental health crises worsen throughout the lawsuit. Amelia’s best friend is Emma, Piper’s daughter. She loses this friendship—as well as other mutual friendships—due to the lawsuit, and she eventually testifies against Charlotte in court to gain some sense of control over her circumstances.

At the end of the novel, Amelia goes to an inpatient facility to get treatment for her bulimia and self-harm. Once she leaves, she becomes passionate about drawing and spends most of her days outside drawing. She is fiercely protective of Willow, despite pretending otherwise.

Piper is Charlotte’s former best friend and OBGYN. Piper is the one who originally diagnoses Willow’s OI, a fact that becomes the narrative’s central conflict when Charlotte learns there is a slim possibility it could have been noticed sooner. Piper serves as antagonist in the sense that she is a maternal foil to Charlotte and becomes the target of the O’Keefes’ lawsuit. However, Piper is not a traditional antagonist: She does not take an adversarial stance or create conflict so much as she reacts to it. While the jury finds Piper liable for damages in Willow’s wrongful birth lawsuit, many of the characters struggle over whether Piper has done anything wrong.

In the aftermath of being sued, Piper gives up her OBGYN practice in town, but she returns to practicing medicine, revealing to Sean that “she was working part-time at a woman’s free health clinic in Boston” (470). This suggests that Piper is not in her profession solely for financial gain. Additionally, Piper worked full-time at the beginning of the novel. By working part-time, she has more time for domestic pursuits, which makes her more like Charlotte.

Without Piper, many of the characters would not have had the lives they had. She introduces Sean and Charlotte: She invites Sean over to dinner to meet Charlotte after he pulls her over for a speeding ticket. Piper is also a secondary maternal figure to Amelia, who is best friends with Piper’s daughter. She describes herself as “a splash of color” (57), and she is comfortable financially, relative to the O’Keefes. She enjoys spoiling Willow and thinks of her as “perfect.”