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Vroman’s Bookstore: Nadia Bowers & Stephanie Wittels Wachs discuss their books, Dear Dealer: A Memoir, and Last Day: How to Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis

September 24 @ 7:00 pm
In-Person Event Free
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About Dear Dealer:

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.

About Last Day:

Based on the groundbreaking podcast of the same name, Last Day weaves together a heartbreaking story of personal loss and an unflinching investigation of what could have prevented it. Alongside expert voices on opioid addiction, Stephanie Wittels Wachs issues a clarion call for change in an ongoing and overwhelming opioid crisis.

Based on the groundbreaking podcast of the same name, Last Day is borne of Stephanie Wittels Wachs’s determination to shed light on the ongoing opioid epidemic in America.

After the tragic and untimely death of her brother Harris Wittels to an opioid overdose, Stephanie connected with Jessica Cordova Kramer, whose brother died under nearly identical circumstances. Together they launched Last Day, a podcast that facilitates unflinching conversations with addiction specialists, harm reductionists, people in long-term recovery, public policy experts pushing for reform, and many others, to determine what could have saved their brothers lives and how we can prevent overdose deaths moving forward.

Ten years ago, Stephanie lost her brother—her person—and over the last seven years, her interviews and research have become a vital resource for others fighting not to lose their person. Heartbreaking yet deeply hopeful, Last Day is, at its core, a powerful story of love that endures long after loss.

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