Dear Zoe

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.

Just before the first anniversary of the hit-and-run death of Tess deNunzio's 3-year-old sister, Zoe, and, only peripherally the first anniversary of September 11, Tess writes to her deceased sister, "sometimes I still miss you so much it feels like someone is pushing their finger into the base of my throat and I cry . . . ." Yes, that's exactly how it feels! I swear, Philip Beard lives inside Tess's head. And when Beard/Tess continues, "each time it happens it feels like I'm going to have a little longer until it happens again and usually I do. It's not that I'm missing you less, It's more like I'm finding a place to keep you." Can anyone think of better words to describe their memories of a loved one lost as the years pass? If you still yearn for the visions of Susie Salmon in "The Lovely Bones", this is the next great book, one that is, for unknown reasons, still very much under the radar of best-sellerdom. On just about every page, I had to stop and taste over and over again the small stark gems of prose that so exquisitely touch on this 15-year-old narrator. I hope to read more from this amazing author. Publisher's Weekly complains that "Most problematically, however, September 11 feels like a giant peg on which a small (but lovely) coat has been hung." That IS exactly the point. As Tess explains how her family will spend the first anniversary watching home videos and talking about Zoe "while the world is remembering everyone else", those who grieve are never alone -- "that on any day you could pick there are thousands and thousands of little deaths, tiny tragedies, and that all of them matter".

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 a

Dear Zoe is a powerful story of loss as experienced by the delicate sensibilities of a teenage girl. The author treats the protagonist, Tess, with unwavering respect and great charm as she comes to terms with her sister's accidental death. It's clear that while her family is close knit, the tragedy can only be interpreted and dealt with individually. Tess' reaction is very different than that of her mother, step-father, and younger sister. The juxtaposition with 9/11 makes the point that a tragedy is a tragedy no matter the scale, but also that all forms of grief are important and must be valued. Through Tess' story, which is liberally sprinkled with her clever humor and practical insight, the author reminds us that teenagers are at once fragile yet resilient: while the loss of her sister had a deep impact, Tess' view of life is ultimately balanced by an appreciation of the immediacy of life - including long summer evenings - so we must believe that her repair is achievable. A great reminder for all of us to balance the gravity of death with the magnificence of life. Bravo for a first novel. I look forward to the next novel!

For Tess DeNunzio, the world changed on September 11, 2001. As the country watched the events of that day unfold, Tess also witnessed a tragic scene. She saw her little sister, Zoe, who she was supposed to be minding, struck and killed by a car outside their suburban Pittsburgh home. DEAR ZOE is written as a letter from fifteen-year-old Tess to the sister she has lost. The epistolary form allows Tess to tell her story with the convincing candor of someone who believes their words will never be read by anyone else. In this debut novel, lawyer-turned-novelist Philip Beard does an admirable job of not only conveying the voice of a teenage girl but also exquisitely portraying a family quietly grieving for a lost child. Beard doesn't exploit the events of September 11th. He uses that day as a mirror to reflect the simple truth that every death has an impact on the people left behind. As Tess writes to Zoe, "You died in this tiny, silent part of that day.... The hardest part is going to be the day itself, the anniversary. The world will stop. People will cry. They will relive the pictures and the familiar video of what to them felt like the end of the world. But it will be just like before. You won't be any part of what they're thinking about. You'll just be the silence itself. Every living person, even ones who lost no one, will be thinking of all those people who fell out of the sky and no one except Mom and David and Em and me will be thinking of you." Tess finds no solace in a house with people as grief-stricken as she is and moves in with her real father, an aimless but well-intentioned man. Here she can just be Tess --- not the stepdaughter who doesn't follow the rules, the daughter who can't comprehend the way her mother has chosen to drown her sorrow, or the fractured role model to her half-sister, Emily. Across town and a world away, Tess finds comfort in her renewed relationship with her father, the puppy who adopts her, a job at a theme park, experimenting with marijuana, and a romance with the troubled but sweet boy next door. As the summer unfolds and leads up to the one-year anniversary of Zoe's death, Tess slowly comes to terms with her feelings of grief and guilt. 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. But it also brings to mind another bestseller, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES, which shares a similar narrative voice and a main character trying to cope with her complicity in the death of a loved one. Whatever comparisons are drawn, there is no doubt that this book is a gem all its own. With DEAR ZOE, Philip Beard has accomplished quite a feat. He makes us believe that only Tess could tell this story. --- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna