Hours away from pushing the button on a self-publishing deal,
lawyer-turned-novelist Philip Beard was 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
died-Tess'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.

© Copyright 2005 by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Group
USA.