"NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOURSELF," Jacob Rubin tells his high school study partner Nate Chambers. "Remember that." Thus begins Jacob's Letters, a 10-year journey of friendship, devotion, and encouragement, as Jacob, bold and brash, and Nate, shy and sensitive, come of age in the 1980's. Their often-intense correspondence over the years-Jacob's letters from California to Nate in Massachusetts and back-help them navigate their struggles with identity, addiction and abuse, depression and divorce, and "coming out" at the peak of the AIDS crisis. Jacob's Letters is personal history from an era before email and social media, when we used the pen and page to share our lives and the world around us.