Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

This book opens with the crash of a sold-out flight from New York to Los Angeles. A conspiracy of freak weather conditions and pilot error sends the Airbus A321 rocketing into the ground somewhere in Colorado. Amid the wreckage of that downed jet, one passenger is found alive: a 12-year-old boy named Edward. This is a novel about the challenges of surviving a public disaster in the modern age. Cable news and social media magnify misery and exposure as never before. Edward awakens in the hospital as the world’s most famous orphan. Broken and terrified, he must immediately shoulder a weird blend of trauma and adulation. Having lost his loving parents and a brother he idolized, he does not feel lucky. Despite the notoriety, he wields no magic, but millions of Web pages claim otherwise. Mourning relatives, conspiracy theorists and morbid gawkers grab at him as though he’s in a zombie apocalypse of grief. This does have rose colored glasses in that Edward lands in an exceptionally good situation and no one is angling for his money, but the emotional struggle is well depicted.