First drink, first prank, first friend, first girl, last words...Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe, boring, and rather lonely life at home.

He leaves for boarding school filled with cautious optimism, to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young.

Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another.

This work is poignant, funny, heartbreaking, and compelling.