About the Book

In this stunning, emotionally charged memoir, Dornstein pens a heartbreaking but profoundly hopeful book about finding beauty in the midst of tragedy. Dornstein weaves his own coming-of-age story with that of his brother David, who was killed in the 1988 crash of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Book Synopsis

The story of one man's search for the truth about his brother--and himself.

"Hugely satisfying ... [Dornstein's] journey ... reveals not just the truth about the Dornstein brothers but about love, loss, and ultimately life's inescapable transience." --The Boston Globe

David Dornstein was twenty-five years old, with dreams of becoming a great writer, when he boarded Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Thirty-eight minutes after takeoff, a terrorist bomb ripped the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Almost a decade later, Ken Dornstein set out to solve the riddle of his older brother's life, using the notebooks and manuscripts that David left behind. In the process, he also began to create a new life of his own.

Review Quotes

"Hugely satisfying ... [Dornstein's] journey ... reveals not just the truth about the Dornstein brothers but about love, loss, and ultimately life's inescapable transience." --The Boston Globe

"Creating narrative coherence out of awful accident is, I suppose, a textbook way of dealing with grief.... [But] Dornstein's skill as a writer makes the raw material [of his brother's life] seem tailor-made for the form he has chosen.... It's a compelling, sad, thoughtful book." --Nick Hornby, The Believer

"Dornstein has written a book that transcends its subject, becoming a meditation upon not only his brother's life but his own. All of ours."--Esquire

"Without an ounce of self-pity or melodrama, [Dornstein] writes with razor-sharp clarity and realizes, as we do, how the chapters themselves are a testament to the enormous love between these two brothers." --The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

KEN DORNSTEIN has been published in The New Yorker and has received two Yaddo artist residencies. He is the series editor at PBS's Frontline and lives near Boston with his wife and two children.