Dear Zoe is now a Book Sense Summer Paperback Selection
About the Author
PHILIP BEARD's first novel, DEAR ZOE, was a Book Sense Pick, a Borders "Original Voices" Selection, and was named by the American Library Association's Booklist as one of the Ten Best First Novels of 2005. It was also named a 2005 Best Book by the School Library Association in the category of Best Adult Books for High School Students, and the audio version, as read by Cassandra Morris, won an AudioFile Earphone Award. Thus far, DEAR ZOE has been translated into Italian, Finnish and Hungarian.A full-time lawyer for more than 10 years, Philip now considers himself a "recovering attorney." He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and three daughters, and his second novel, LOST IN THE GARDEN was released by Viking in May, 2006.
For more information, reviews, interviews, etc., go to www.philipbeard.net .
Or visit the Lost in the Garden MySpace
About the Book
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.Praise for Dear Zoe
"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
"Like [The Lovely Bones], 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."
-BOOKLIST, starred review
"Whatever comparisons are drawn, there is no doubt that this book is a gem all its own."
-BOOKREPORTER.COM
Beard has a "perceptive writer's soul" [and he] "peels away the layers of his protagonist's anquish simply and sensitively."
-THE WASHINGTON POST
"In his soulful debut novel . . . Philip Beard does a pitch-perfect impersonation but never sugar-coats the depths of a young girl's despair."
-THE PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE
"The whole novel . . . rings with truth. By the end of it, we're meditating on the ideas of loss and redemption, the ways in which personal tragedies get absorbed into larger ones, but never obliterated, never forgotten."
-THE BUFFALO NEWS