Since Celeste has never really worried about being alone, the generous paycheck she’ll receive for her participation in the solitary psychological experiment seems like easy money.

This story of 12-year-old Maddie, who wakes up one morning to discover that her entire town has been evacuated and she's been left behind, is harrowing, poignant, and thought-provoking. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences - so crucial in defining us - can also be redefined.

My eyes are always drawn to skin and the way you can see the calcified pistons and joints bend and protrude, testing the limits of the soft nets protecting them.

Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road.

And Addie, who is grieving the loss of her father, finds solace in her online conversations with Jolene, her biggest - and only - fan. Twelve-year-old Jolene spends every day she can at the library watching her favorite livestream: The Desert Aviator, where twelve-year-old "Addie Earhart" shares her adventures flying an ultralight plane over the desert. It has to be said that Alone is not a self-help book; it’s an existential book, and all the more transgressive for it. It is an adventure at odds with our normal, sociable lives, carried out floating on a medium wholly inimical to our existence.