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.

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.

She doesn't realize that a single day can be the dividing line between life and death.

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.

What do words written long ago have to say today?

Everything.

Ami Hendrickson's epistolary novel Dear Alderone spans generations, exploring those moments in life when-for good or for ill-everything changes in an instant.

A love-letter to the written word and a testimony to the power of preserving personal history through journaling, Dear Alderone embraces the experiences that define our friendships, our families, and ourselves.