Dear Dana by Amy Daughters Book Review!

 

When Amy Daughters reconnected with her old pal Dana on Facebook, she had no idea how it would change her life. Though the two women hadn’t had any contact in thirty years, it didn’t take them long to catch up—and when Amy learned that Dana’s son Parker was doing a second stint at St. Jude battling cancer, she was suddenly inspired to begin writing the pair weekly letters.

When Parker died, Amy—not knowing what else to do—continued to write Dana. Eventually, Dana wrote back, and the two became pen pals, sharing things through the mail that they had never shared before. The richness of the experience left Amy wondering something: If my life could be so changed by someone I considered “just a Facebook friend,” what would happen if I wrote all my Facebook friends a letter?

A whopping 580 handwritten letters later Amy’s life, and most of all her heart, would never, ever, be the same again. As it turned out, there were actual individuals living very real lives behind each social media profile, and she was beautifully connected to each of those extraordinary, flawed people for a specific reason. They loved her, and she loved them. And nothing—not politics, beliefs, or lifestyle—could separate them.

A native Houstonian and a graduate of The Texas Tech University, Amy W. Daughters has been a freelance writer for more than a decade—mostly covering college football and sometimes talking about her feelings. Her debut novel, You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened (She Writes Press, 2019), was selected as the Silver Winner for Humor in the 2019 Foreword INDIES and the Overall Winner for Humor/Comedy in the 2020 Next Generation Indie Awards. An amateur historian, hack golfer, charlatan fashion model, and regular on the ribbon dancing circuit, Amy—a proud former resident of Blackwell, England, and Dayton, Ohio—currently lives in Tomball, Texas, a suburb of Houston. She is married to a foxy computer person, Willie (53), and is the lucky mother of two amazing sons, Will (23) and Matthew (15).

My Thoughts

Dear Dana by Amy W. Daughters is the story of how the author decided to hand write all her friends on Facebook. After the death of the son of a friend she went to camp with, back in the day, not knowing how to reach out to her friend, she decides to write to all 580 friends that she has on Facebook.

Everyone and their friends are on Facebook. A place to stay connected to people you know and some you don't. It can be a place that is very impersonal though. Do you really know all of your "friends"?

I have been on Facebook myself since 2010. I love it because I can keep in touch with family, mostly my children who are scattered across the country and other countries. I also have a lot of "friends" but mostly since I am a blogger and book reviewer. Do I really know these people, not really but it is still nice connecting. 

Amy took the friendships a bit further, starting with the project of putting all of her Facebook friends' names in a box and choosing one each day. Turns out she had 580 handwritten letters to write, not postcards but actual letters.  A painstaking and daunting task at the beginning. As time went by, she became to enjoy writing the letters and getting answers back, some people did not write back which was ok for her.

Because of this project, she ended up having lifelong friends, people she had not seen or heard from in years. So what started as a way to connect and offer prayers to a friend whose son had passed away from cancer, ended up being a lifelong friendship.

I found this story very interesting, not sure if it is something that I would entertain but a very unique and valuable experience for the author and her friends and family.

I give the book 5 stars!

I received a copy of the book for review purposes only.