One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them is a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured vet returning from Afghanistan, a septuagenarian business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. And then, tragically, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.

Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place for himself in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a piece of him has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery–one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do find yourself? How do you discover your purpose? What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?

After hearing so much about this book, I finally decided to give it a try. And once I started, I simply could not put it down.

Dear Edward is a powerful, sad, emotionally gripping story about unimaginable loss and how to rebuild a life. It’s the story of Edward Adler, who at age 12 is the sole survivor of a terrible plane crash, in which he loses his parents and older brother.

Edward is immediately adopted by his aunt and uncle and brought to live with them in their New Jersey home. He recovers from his physical injuries, but the damage to his heart and mind seems insurmountable. He’s lost everything and everyone, and while surrounded by kindness and support, has to figure out how to live the rest of his life when he’s completely lost and without direction.

It doesn’t help that people around the world have fixated on him as a “miracle boy”. He’s famous, but the attention can feel toxic, and certainly isn’t good for his fragile state. Fortunately, the 12-year-old girl next door, Shay, sees him merely as a boy and a curiosity, and becomes a key to his daily struggle to survive.

In interludes between chapters, we also see the events on the flight that fateful day as, hour by hour, the people onboard move closer to their deaths. We get to know individuals, their hopes, fears, and dreams, and each time these flight scenes come up, the looming disaster feels even more tragic and inevitable.

Without saying too much about the plot itself, I’ll just say that this book is so gripping that I read it pretty much straight through. I had to know what would happen next for Edward, and on top of that, the structure of the book means that we see snippets of the flight throughout, but don’t get to the awful end of it until close to the end of the book. And while we know that the plane will in fact crash, by giving us a close-up connection to so many of the passengers, when the end comes, it hits very hard and feels like a huge blow.

The writing is sensitive and well-structured, and the weaving together of the two main story elements keeps both moving forward with intensity. I came to love Edward as a character, as well as the wonderful people who come into his life at key moments and become central to his survival.

Dear Edward is an absorbing, emotional read with a strong plot and memorable characters. Highly recommended.