Looking for Alaska

Everybody has a talent. Miles Halter's is knowing the last words of a lot of different people—people like the author Rabelais, whose enigmatic last words "I go to seek a Great Perhaps" inspire the sixteen year-old to leave his family home in Florida and enroll in Culver Creek, a co-ed boarding school in Alabama. There he makes a new circle of friends: his roommate Chip, a scholarship student whom everyone calls "The Colonel;" Takumi, a slyly funny Japanese-American rapper; and sweet-spirited, Romanian-born Lara, who has trouble pronouncing the letter "i." But most importantly he meets Alaska, a beautiful girl who "had eyes that predisposed you to supporting her every endeavor." Miles quickly falls in love with this reckless, quirky, endlessly intriguing girl. An omnivorous reader, Alaska introduces him to a new set of last words — those of South American liberator Simón Bolivar — that pose an intriguing question, "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?" It's a question that takes on a deeper, more poignant resonance when an unthinkable tragedy invites Miles to examine the meanings of life . . . and death.