Dear Alderone

<p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>I went back to the den and put the stereo on. I don't know how long I sat there zoning listening to the music and trying not to think. Suddenly my brother came in the room.</em></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>His hair was all messed up and his face looked gray and shadowed. Neither of us spoke for a while. Strange. All I could think about was that for fourteen years nothing ever happened in my family. I go out on a real date for one afternoon and suddenly everything falls to pieces. Go figure.</em></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Jera Fowler is hardly excited about having to keep a journal for ninth grade English class. What can happen in a day? she grumps as she chronicles the 1984-85 school year.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>She doesn't realize that a single day can be the dividing line between life and death.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Forty years later while Jera is in the hospital facing an uncertain future her teenage granddaughter Rayna discovers the journal and reads all night long.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>What do words written long ago have to say today?</span></p><p></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Everything</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Ami Hendrickson's epistolary novel</span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)> Dear Alderone </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>spans generations exploring those moments in life when-for good or for ill-everything changes in an instant.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>A love-letter to the written word and a testimony to the power of preserving personal history through journaling </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Dear Alderone </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>embraces the experiences that define our friendships our families and ourselves.</span></p>