Dear Edward
Edward Adler is twelve when the plane carrying his family from Newark to Los Angeles goes down in a Colorado field. He is the only person on board to walk away. Sent to live with an aunt and uncle in suburban New Jersey, he tries to absorb the size of his loss while strangers send letters addressed to him from all over the country. The novel moves between the hours on the plane and the years of Edward's recovery, building portraits of the passengers around him and the friend next door who refuses to let him disappear. Ann Napolitano writes about catastrophe and aftermath without rushing past either one.
What you might want to know about Dear Edward
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After a plane crash kills 191 people, twelve-year-old Edward is the sole survivor, and a small town has to figure out how to raise him.
Jenna Bush Hager chose Dear Edward as the January 2020 Read with Jenna selection on the Today Show, telling viewers it was the kind of emotional, character-driven novel she wanted to start the year with and inviting Ann Napolitano on the show to discuss it.
It was inspired by the 2010 crash of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, which left a nine-year-old boy as its sole survivor. The characters and storyline in the book are entirely fictional.
Dear Edward was written by Ann Napolitano, published in 2020 by Dial Press.
Dear Edward is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Dear Edward takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Dear Edward is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.