Five Things about Eustace

A slightly OTT name isn’t the only thing that rich boy Eustace Reverdy Mountfort, 23, has in common with Sweet Home Alabama and Hulk star Joshua Lucas Easy Dent Maurer.  (His movie name is Joshua Lucas.) I imagine Eustace having the same searching gaze and engaging smile, delivered with just a hint of sadness around the eyes that says “You can trust me, I’m a man of genuine feelings.”

Except of course Elanora couldn’t rely on the privileged New Yorker, who doesn’t realize what he’s got until he loses it.  And when he does, he’s reluctant to accept it’s too late to get it back. It takes him years to recognize he’s taken his wealth and status for granted, and that his privilege comes at the cost of personal happiness and freedom.

Five things you might not know about Eustace.

1. He refuses to countenance that his father is a bullying deceitful fraud, because the alternative – that he is not the pillar of society he appears to be – is too upsetting to confront.
2. He stays wilfully blind to the way his father consistently belittles his mother – who is twice the person her husband is on all counts – for the same cowardly reason.  Acknowledging the bad treatment would require him to do something about it.  And he can’t risk losing the good life his father’s money provides.
3. He is a talented musician who only gets to enjoy music when he frees himself from his father’s clutches.
4. His sense of superiority is so ingrained he finds it impossible to believe Elanora could love and desire Rafael when she could have him. And an arrogance not unlike his father’s propels him to disaster in his bid to “win Elanora back.”
5. The events on the Sacramento road bond John Russell and Eustace together for the rest of their lives. Russell won’t let Eustace go because he’s a ticking time bomb with his heavy drinking, his sensitive nature and his guilty conscience. He only makes good on his mistakes with his “confessional letters” delivered after his death.