DEAR DANA

An autobiographical work relates what happened when a woman wrote letters to all of her Facebook friends.

Daughters, a freelance writer and author of the novel You Cannot Mess This Up (2019), challenges readers to think about the meaning of concepts like friendship and communication in the age of social media. After a Facebook friend named Dana posted about her son’s fatal cancer, Daughters tried to write her a letter and realized she needed a mailing address. The author then decided to write letters to all of her 580 Facebook friends. Most of the people Daughters wrote to responded—some with letters and others with Facebook direct messages. The book is therefore structured around selections from all of the author’s letters and responses. She also includes a moving story of her reconnection with Dana, culminating in Daughters' traveling to her friend’s home and finding herself the guest of honor at a luncheon. At the event, all the letters the author wrote to Dana were spread decoratively on a table. Throughout the volume, Daughters has much to say about old-fashioned forms of communication versus how people connect (or not) on social media, some of it insightful and some of it familiar. Overall, the book works best when the author reflects on the vagaries of personal communication and relationships or describes her own experiences. In contrast, the letters and responses can get a bit repetitive, especially the missives written to people Daughters worked with in the adult-beverage industry. And her frequent references to prayers and God’s love will mainly appeal to Christian readers. Still, this volume provides a captivating study regarding writing letters to friends and rethinking how people successfully bond in the modern world.

An intriguing and inspiring exploration of different forms of communication.