On 3rd December 2005, 13-year-old Charlotte Thompson and her school friend were killed by a train at Elsenham station in Essex. They were crossing the tracks to catch a train to Cambridge to go Christmas shopping. There was no footbridge at the station.

Following her death, Charlie’s father began writing a series of remarkable letters to his lost daughter. The letters were his way of continuing to talk to Charlie, of keeping her close to him after death. In them, he writes of his terrible grief, and of family life in the wake of disaster. Through his letters he creates a powerful portrait of his beautiful, vivid and unpredictable daughter. He also describes a family struggling to survive tragedy and the challenges and triumphs of daily domestic life in a world that will never be the same again.

Dear Charlie is a moving family memoir, an account of mourning, and a biography of a lost girl. Above all, it is a powerful love letter from a father to his daughter.