Product Description

Philip Beard’s stunning debut novel is fifteen-year-old Tess DeNunzio’s 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1697655 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-25
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A 15-year-old girl struggles to cope with private grief in an age of public catastrophe in this awkwardly conceived but sweet, sure-voiced debut. When her little sister, Zoe, dies after being struck by a car on September 11, 2001, savvy, self-aware Tess DeNunzio works through her grief by writing letters to Zoe. Tess's candid observations about her feelings of guilt (she witnessed the accident) and her mourning process give warmth and clarity to her descriptions of daily life in the aftermath. Not sure how to deal with her bereaved mother and uncommunicative stepfather, Tess moves across Pittsburgh to live with her real dad, an underemployed weight lifter with a good heart. Tess's wise-beyond-her-years sensibility can seem contrived ("That's one of the strangest parts of being a stepchild. You actually get to watch your parents fall in love"), and a morality lesson about the virtues of virginity feels tacked on. Most problematically, however, September 11 feels like a giant peg on which a small (but lovely) coat has been hung. Maybe that's the point, but much more moving are Tess's attempts to cope with the conventional aspects of the loss of her sister.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–When 15-year-old Tess DeNunzio loses her stepsister in a freak hit-and-run accident on September 11, 2001, she chronicles her family's recovery in an epistolary novel that is a tribute to the power of love to heal. First-time novelist Beard has created a unique and authentic voice in Tess, who struggles with her own ambivalent feelings of guilt. As the first-year anniversary of the Twin Towers collapse and Zoe's death approaches, the teen dreads the day. The world will stop. People will cry…I don't care about all those others, because I even resent them for dying on the day that should have been yours alone. This honesty, tempered with wit, keeps her afloat as she navigates her adolescence during this rocky period in her family's life. As her tenuous relationship with her stepfather worsens and her mother's silence permeates the house, Tess escapes to her n'er-do-well father's home. She meets Jimmy Freeze, with whom she shares sex and a little weed, which it turns out her father and Jimmy sell. But, more importantly, she learns what it is to love and be loved. Dear Zoe is not a dark novel. Young adults will identify with Tess's resilience and find the far-from-perfect adults who populate her world familiar. When Tess returns to her blended family, readers understand her well-intentioned father's pain. It is a moment that will resonate for many as Tess realizes that what is right for her will hurt the imperfect parent she loves.–Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
On the morning planes hit the World Trade Center towers, Tess DeNunzio's three-year-old sister, Zoe, ran into the street and was killed by a car. Fifteen-year-old Tess, who was supposed to be watching Zoe, was consumed by guilt. This novel is written in the form of a letter from Tess to Zoe, chronicling the year after Zoe's death. Tess lives with her mother, her stepfather, David, and her other half-sister, Emily; and after Zoe's death she feels more disconnected from them than ever. She decides to go live with her father, Nick, a good-hearted man who has big plans that never seem to pan out. Living with Nick allows Tess to, in a sense, start fresh; she begins a romance with Jimmy Freeze, the troubled but thoughtful boy next door, and gets a summer job at a theme park where no one knows what happened to her sister. But Tess isn't able to hide forever: a similar accident forces Tess to face her grief head on. Beard's debut will no doubt be compared to Alice Sebold's Lovely Bones (2002); like that novel, it is a piercing look at how a family recovers from a devastating loss. 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. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Love and Loss
Dear Zoe by Philip Beard is this author's debut book. And what a debut this book is in my opinion. This is a book to be read not once, but several times. And each time one can explore some new aspect of a sad tale from which not only the characters in this book can learn from but something which teaches all of us about life and loss.

Tess's youngest sister dies on September 11th but not as a result of the Twin Towers tragedy. Unfortunately While waiting for the school bus, Tess takes her eyes off her sister, Zoe for a couple of minutes and when Zoe wanders off and into the street, she is hit and killed by a reckless driver.

The death of a sibling is horrific at any age but for Tess the guilt is even greater. Zoe was Tess's half sister -- the child of her mother's second marriage and the beloved youngest child of this family. Tess is faced with unbearable agony and guilt over this event and asks herself many questions as the family tries to recover. First and foremost Tess asks herself how a devoted older sister will ever cope with her younger sisters death? And how does she cope with the fact that she was at fault for her sister's death when she turned away just for that moment? How will she ever cope with the fact that in that moment when she turned away she was finding out about the 9/11 tragedy in New York City? And the final question posed to her that day will forever haunt her when her mother asked, "Where's Zoe?" And most of all how will Tess cope with the fact that while the world at large is mourning a terrorist attack in Manhattan her sister's death goes almost unnoticed.

Dear Zoe is a letter to Zoe from Tess basically their first year without her. More than that thought this book tells the story, in frank and poignant passages, how Tess not only came to terms with Zoe's death but how she also came to terms with her part in this tragedy and to forgive herself. But for Tess to deal with her part in the tragedy and come to grips with this isn't easy. The book is filled with events during that long year and how Tess grows up and ventures into almost another world as she goes to live with her negligent father and finds herself falling in love with the boy next door who may or may not be right for Tess. While Dear Zoe deals with the tragedy of Zoe's death, in a sense it deals more with Tess's coming of age as she deals with the love for her lost sister, for the love her family provides for one another, the love her errant father shows towards her and Tess's. And as painful as it is for us to read this book, we know that Tess will come out of this overwhelmingly sad even much stronger and wiser for knowing about the power of love and forgiveness.

In many respects this book, with a strong young female adolescent character, reminded me of the main character from The Usual Rules by Joyce Maynard and Katie Nash from the Durable Goods trilogy by Elizabeth Berg. Each of these books provided me with characters I felt I knew well and ones I won't ever forget.

I highly recommend all of the above mentioned books and now look forward to Philip Beard's next book. I see a bright future ahead for both this author and his main character.

A POIGNANT STORY OF HEALING AND LOVE

A child's death is surely one of life's most painful experiences. It is, perhaps even more heartrending when one of the grief stricken is little more than a child herself. In this fully realized fiction debut by Philip Beard just such a scenario is presented. Tess, is the guilt ridden mourner, and Zoe, is her three-year-old sister, killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Tess's story is told in the form of letters written to Zoe, and read by voice actress Cassandra Morris. It's a triumphant performance, never soaked in sentimentality but an uncompromising rendering of the thoughts and experiences undergone by Tess following her little sister's death.

A mere 15 years old, Tess is almost overcome by feelings of guilt because she saw the accident; it occurred when Zoe was in her care. That's certainly enough to hobble even the most mature. We hear Tess's struggle as she first leaves the home she shares with her mother and stepfather to move in with her birth father, a man with mega dreams and minor realizations. Nonetheless, he's a good man and cares for Tess.

Like many other girls her age she soon finds herself attracted to a boy, and lands a summer job. She seems on the road to healing until the unexpected happens and she is confronted with some immutable truths.

- Gail Cooke

Unequivocally 5 Stars
I didn't know what I was in for when I picked up this book from my library. The title intrigued me, and the inside jacket information made me check it out. It looked good, yes, but I couldn't have imagined just how good until I read it.

I won't go into a synopsis as that's been done a bunch of times already. I'll just say that Philip Beard is nothing short of brilliant, right up there with Alice Sebold. His characters are enormously human, and they are all brought out in 3-D equally.

His ability to turn a phrase is manifested in every paragraph. It is evident that the depth to which he loves his characters is endless.

My emotions were brought to the surface on numerous (more than numerous, really) occasions, and not manipulatively. This story will live in the same place in my heart where The Lovely Bones resides.