Dear Dealer: A Memoir

Summary

In the tradition of The Night of the Gun, this propulsive memoir lays bare the human cost of the opioid crisis, tracing one woman’s obsessive search for truth in the wake of her sister’s death from a fentanyl overdose.

Expanding on her viral 2018 This American Life piece of the same name, Nadia Bowers reveals the letters she wrote to the faceless dealer—the last person to see her sister alive—braided into a searing eight-year narrative of rage, grief, and reckoning.

Dear Dealer is a love letter. It is also a ransom note, a confession, a monologue, and a record of fixation. Nadia has been left with the artifacts of a life cut short: photographs, papers, a phone filled with encoded messages, and a datebook marked with future plans. The official documents explain how Sasha died. But they aren’t enough. Nadia needs to know why.

As she pursues the truth behind Sasha’s death, Nadia must also confront the complexities of her sister’s life: Sasha was an Ivy League grad and beloved, passionate social worker whose devotion to helping people in recovery couldn’t save her.

Sasha’s death comes just over two months before the birth of Nadia’s son. As she begins a family of her own, Nadia reflects with savage humor on her shifting roles as sister, daughter, wife, and new mother, examining how loss reshaped her sense of self.

Rooted in unflinching honesty and poetic prose, Dear Dealer is a richly compelling account of one woman’s search for meaning, forgiveness, and hope in the aftermath of tragedy.