BRIEFLY NOTED | THE NEW YORKER
Expanded from a piece for “This American Life,” this memoir charts the aftermath of the death, from an opioid overdose, of the author’s sister, Sasha. Written as a series of letters to Sasha’s unknown dealer, Bowers’s book offers her a way to process her grief and parse her relationship with her sister. Sasha’s addiction began from attempts to suppress Tourette’s tics: she took over-the-counter sedatives first, before turning to synthetic opioids. Bowers recounts repeatedly examining Sasha’s cellphone in the hope of identifying the person who sold her deadly drugs—a quest that she ultimately acknowledges is futile. “I’ve been using you. Like a fix,” she admits to the phantom dealer. “It’s hard to imagine my life without you. But I need to try.”
FEATURES & INTERVIEWS
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When My Sister’s Addiction Killed Her, I Turned Into a Manic Detective. It Turns Out I Wasn’t Alone.
In the new memoir Dear Dealer, Nadia Bowers writes about turning into “Nancy Drew” after her sister’s death.
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Writing Through Loss: On Crafting Nonfiction That Tackles America’s Opioid Crisis
Nadia Bowers and Stephanie Wittels Wachs discuss their shared stories of losing loved ones to addiction.
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When a person dies of an overdose, everyone wants someone to blame. If only it were so simple.
Recent celebrity overdose deaths have revived familiar questions about responsibility, but experts say addiction rarely has one simple cause.
PODCASTS & AUDIO
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The Secret of My Death
We begin with a woman whose sister has died. She has questions. Her name
is Nadia Bowers, and she wrote this to someone she thinks might be of help. -
Dear Dealer
When Nadia Bowers's sister Sasha died of fentanyl overdose in 2015, Nadia
was seven months pregnant with her first child and had gotten married just
six weeks earlier. Suddenly she had to ask herself: how do I go on after the
worst thing that's ever happened to me? In this episode, Nadia tells Stephanie how writing her new memoir, Dear Dealer, helped her process her rage, grief, and the anxiety of new motherhood while navigating this crippling loss. -
DEAR DEALER
When writer and actor Nadia Bowers learned that her beloved older sister
Sasha died of a drug overdose, she set out to track down the dealer who sold
Sasha the fentanyl-laced heroin. Bowers discusses her memoir about the experience, called Dear Dealer.