Dear Zoe - by Philip Beard (Paperback)

About the Book

Beard's debut is an epistolary novel written from 15-year-old Tess DeNunzio to her little sister Zoe. After Zoe's death on September 11, 2001, Tess's family is numbed by their personal tragedy. Not Since "The Lovely Bones" has there been a study of grief, adolescence, and healing that rings as true.

Book Synopsis

DON'T MISS THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING SADIE SINK OF STRANGER THINGS!

Dear Zoe is a remarkable study of grief, adolescence, and healing with a pitch-perfect narrator who is at once sharp and naive, world-worried and self-centered, funny and heartbreakingly honest.

Fifteen-year-old Tess DeNunzio hasn't been the same since she lost her sister Zoe to a hit-and-run accident on September 11th--when it seemed like nothing mattered except the tragedies playing out in New York and Washington. Dear Zoe is Tess's letter to her sister, written as a means of figuring out her own life and her place in the world--and the result is a novel of rare power and grace that tells us much about ours.

Review Quotes

Praise for Dear Zoe

"Like The Lovely Bones, [Dear Zoe] is a piercing look at how family recovers from a devastating loss. Everything about this moving, powerful debut rings true."--Booklist (starred review)

"Beard peels away the layers of his protagonist's anguish simply and sensitively...and creates real, multidimensional and affecting characters."--The Washington Post

"Affecting."--Entertainment Weekly

"The whole novel...rings with truth."--The Buffalo News

"Lovely...moving."--Publishers Weekly

"In his soulful debut novel...Philip Beard does a pitch-perfect impersonation but never sugar-coats the depths of a young girl's despair."--Pittsburg-Post Gazette

"Dear Zoe is an almost flawless novel of self-discovery and redemption. It is the sort of book that a generation can call 'theirs, ' a book that captures the trials of adolescence and the aching numbness of America in the aftermath of 9/11."--The Press of Atlantic City

About the Author

Philip Beard is a former attorney who practiced law in Pittsburgh before turning to writing. His first novel, Dear Zoe, was a Book Sense Pick, a Borders Original Voices Selection, and was chosen by Booklist as one of the ten best first novels of 2005.