Synopses & Reviews
Hours away from pushing the button on a self-publishing deal, lawyer-turned-novelist Philip Beardwas won over by the combined efforts of a bookseller, a sales rep, a publisher, and an agent, and brought the book to Viking. With its extraordinary backstory already covered in
Publishers Weekly's "Hot Deals" column,
Dear Zoe has got built-in buzz that's just going to keep growing.
Beard's stunning debut is an epistolary novel written from fifteen-year-old Tess DeNunzio to her little sister Zoe. After Zoe's accidental death on September 11, 2001 a day so many others diedTess's family is numbed by their personal tragedy. Already acutely aware of her odd place in a home where her mother and stepfather now have children of their own, Tess begins her letter as a means of figuring out her own life from her two-hour-a-day hair and makeup ritual to her complicity in Zoe's death. Only after she moves in with her real father, a well-intentioned deadbeat, and stumbles into a halting romance with the sweet but aimless boy next door, does Tess begin to open her heart once more.
Not since The Lovely Bones has there been a study of grief, adolescence, and healing that rings as true as Dear Zoe. In Tess, a girl on the verge of womanhood, Beard has crafted a pitch-perfect narrator and a debut novel of rare power and grace that will remain with readers long after the book is put down.
Review
"Earnest and sensitive to a fault." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[P]iercing....Beard captures the raw emotion of a 15-year-old girl with impressive dexterity, following Tess through the many stages of grief. Everything about this moving, powerful debut rings true." Booklist
Review
"Dear Zoe is likely to earn comparisons to The Lovely Bones for its depiction of a family coping with the sudden and violent death of a child....Philip Beard has accomplished quite a feat." Bookreporter.com
Review
"This coming-of-age novel will no doubt appeal to the angst-ridden teenage girls who have graduated from Judy Blume novels." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Synopsis
SOON TO BE A 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 na ve, 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. The result is a novel of rare power and grace that tells us much about ours.
Synopsis
Philip Beards stunning debut novel is fifteen-year-old Tess DeNunzios letter to her sister, Zoe, lost to a hit-and-run driver on a day when it seemed that nothing mattered but the tragedies playing out in New York and Washington. Dear Zoe is a remarkable study of grief, adolescence, and healing with a pitch-perfect narrator who is at once sharp and naïve, world- worried and self-centered, funny and heartbreakingly honest. Tess begins her letter to Zoe as a means of figuring out her own life, her place in the world, but the result is a novel of rare power and grace that tells us much about ours.
Synopsis
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 protagonists anguish simply and sensitively. . . and creates real, multidimensional and affecting characters.”
The Washington Post
The whole novel . . . rings with truth.”
The Buffalo News
About the Author
Philip Beard is a writer, teacher, and attorney. This is his first novel.