Dear Dealer- A Memoir by Nadia Bowers.jpg
Dear Dealer- A Memoir by Nadia Bowers2.jpg
Dear Dealer- A Memoir by Nadia Bowers.jpg
Dear Dealer- A Memoir by Nadia Bowers2.jpg

Dear Dealer: A Memoir by Nadia Bowers

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Hardcover:

For readers of Beautiful Boy and The Night of the Gun, this gripping memoir explores addiction, grief, and family trauma as one woman goes in search of her sister's killer.

In the summer of 2015, Nadia Bowers's beloved older sister, Sasha—a social worker and Ivy League graduate—was found in her car in a restaurant parking lot in their hometown outside New Haven, Connecticut, dead from a fentanyl overdose. Plunged into grief, equipped with Sasha's phone, and just weeks from giving birth to her first child, Nadia began to investigate her sister's shadow life: who sold Sasha the drugs that killed her? Did they know each other well? Did the dealer have any idea who Sasha was, outside of addiction?

Expanding on her viral 2018 This American Life essay of the same name—a letter to this imagined dealer—Bowers's memoir is a love letter, a diary, and a quest in search of the dealer's identity, as well as her own. Who is she without her sister? Who is she because of her sister? And what now? Bowers reflects on her shifting roles as sister and mother, examining how loss has reshaped her sense of self. Her letters to the faceless dealer are interwoven with rage, reflection, and even moments of humor as she recounts their intertwined lives alongside memories of charismatic and complex Sasha.

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.

For readers of Beautiful Boy and The Night of the Gun, this gripping memoir explores addiction, grief, and family trauma as one woman goes in search of her sister's killer.

In the summer of 2015, Nadia Bowers's beloved older sister, Sasha—a social worker and Ivy League graduate—was found in her car in a restaurant parking lot in their hometown outside New Haven, Connecticut, dead from a fentanyl overdose. Plunged into grief, equipped with Sasha's phone, and just weeks from giving birth to her first child, Nadia began to investigate her sister's shadow life: who sold Sasha the drugs that killed her? Did they know each other well? Did the dealer have any idea who Sasha was, outside of addiction?

Expanding on her viral 2018 This American Life essay of the same name—a letter to this imagined dealer—Bowers's memoir is a love letter, a diary, and a quest in search of the dealer's identity, as well as her own. Who is she without her sister? Who is she because of her sister? And what now? Bowers reflects on her shifting roles as sister and mother, examining how loss has reshaped her sense of self. Her letters to the faceless dealer are interwoven with rage, reflection, and even moments of humor as she recounts their intertwined lives alongside memories of charismatic and complex Sasha.

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.

  • Publisher: Gallery Books

    Title: Dear Dealer: A Memoir

    Author: Nadia Bowers

    On Sale Date: September 15, 2026

    ISBN 13: 978-1-668-03789-8

    ISBN 10: 1-668-03789-0

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $30.00

    BISAC: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Death, Grief, Bereavement; PSYCHOLOGY / Psychopathology / Addiction; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

    Page Count: 352

    Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.1 in

    Weight: 0.96 lb

  • Nadia Bowers has spent her career as a working actor across theater, television, and film, with a BA from Dartmouth and an MFA from NYU's Graduate Acting Program. In the summer of 2015, that career paused when her sister Sasha—a social worker and Ivy League graduate—died of a fentanyl overdose near their Connecticut hometown, just weeks before Bowers gave birth to her first child. In 2018, Bowers turned her grief into a viral This American Life essay: a letter addressed to the dealer who sold Sasha the drugs that killed her. Dear Dealer expands that essay into a full memoir, following Bowers's real search for the dealer's identity alongside a reckoning with who she is as a sister, a daughter, and now a mother. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, actor Corey Stoll, and their son.

  • Critics and fellow bestselling authors are calling it gorgeous, unflinching, and devastating:

    • "A heartfelt, often heartbreaking exploration of what led to the overdose death of the author's sister." — The Boston Globe

    • "A moving embodiment of the powerful, creative energy of grief." — Kirkus, starred review

    • "In this gorgeous, broken-hearted elegy to a lost sister, Nadia Bowers has written an extraordinary, brave book." — Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author

    • "Bowers gives us a beautiful, devastating and intimate portrait of family, of sisterhood and of tragedy unfolding." — Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author

This book is for you if

  • You want an unflinching memoir about the fentanyl crisis told from the inside—by the sister left behind, not a policy report.

  • You're drawn to true stories where grief becomes an active investigation: Nadia Bowers using her sister's phone to search for the dealer who sold her the drugs that killed her.

  • You loved Beautiful Boy or The Night of the Gun and want the next essential book in the genre of addiction-and-family memoir.

  • You want a book that's honest about complexity—love, rage, and even humor coexisting in the same grief.

  • You appreciate memoirs that started as something smaller (a viral This American Life essay) and grew into something bigger without losing their intimacy.

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