Dear Zoe by Philip Beard
Penguin
Paperback
Ages 14+
*INDIGO’S PICK!*
Dear Zoe is a book that asks a question no one else has the courage to ask--what happens if the worst day of your life is shadowed by a separate, larger tragedy? On 9/11, Tess Denuizo loses her younger sister in a traumatic, hit-and-run accident and it changes her life forever. Her family finds it impossible to cope with their grief and is ultimately falling apart. She feels a distance between her mother and stepfather, and ends up moving in with her deadbeat dad and slipping into her coming of age story. She falls for the boy next door, they smoke a lot of weed, drama ensues, they kiss at Kennywood. It’s everything you could want from a teen love story set in Pittsburgh. I read this book when I, too, was 15, like Tess, and trying to balance a life of disorder at home and puberty and first love. This book was a friend to me and brought me comfort at a time when we all think we might be the only ones struggling. I passed it along from friend to friend, sharing its relief. If you’re a Pittsburgh native or a transplant who’s fallen in love with our little city of bridges, this book will delight you to no end. If you’re trying to grapple with a loss or even just the cruel unpredictability of life, it will bring you the peace you’ve been seeking. Pick this book up from the shelf and let it be your friend. You can count on it.
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.
Penguin
Paperback
Ages 14+
*INDIGO’S PICK!*
Dear Zoe is a book that asks a question no one else has the courage to ask--what happens if the worst day of your life is shadowed by a separate, larger tragedy? On 9/11, Tess Denuizo loses her younger sister in a traumatic, hit-and-run accident and it changes her life forever. Her family finds it impossible to cope with their grief and is ultimately falling apart. She feels a distance between her mother and stepfather, and ends up moving in with her deadbeat dad and slipping into her coming of age story. She falls for the boy next door, they smoke a lot of weed, drama ensues, they kiss at Kennywood. It’s everything you could want from a teen love story set in Pittsburgh. I read this book when I, too, was 15, like Tess, and trying to balance a life of disorder at home and puberty and first love. This book was a friend to me and brought me comfort at a time when we all think we might be the only ones struggling. I passed it along from friend to friend, sharing its relief. If you’re a Pittsburgh native or a transplant who’s fallen in love with our little city of bridges, this book will delight you to no end. If you’re trying to grapple with a loss or even just the cruel unpredictability of life, it will bring you the peace you’ve been seeking. Pick this book up from the shelf and let it be your friend. You can count on it.
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.
Penguin
Paperback
Ages 14+
*INDIGO’S PICK!*
Dear Zoe is a book that asks a question no one else has the courage to ask--what happens if the worst day of your life is shadowed by a separate, larger tragedy? On 9/11, Tess Denuizo loses her younger sister in a traumatic, hit-and-run accident and it changes her life forever. Her family finds it impossible to cope with their grief and is ultimately falling apart. She feels a distance between her mother and stepfather, and ends up moving in with her deadbeat dad and slipping into her coming of age story. She falls for the boy next door, they smoke a lot of weed, drama ensues, they kiss at Kennywood. It’s everything you could want from a teen love story set in Pittsburgh. I read this book when I, too, was 15, like Tess, and trying to balance a life of disorder at home and puberty and first love. This book was a friend to me and brought me comfort at a time when we all think we might be the only ones struggling. I passed it along from friend to friend, sharing its relief. If you’re a Pittsburgh native or a transplant who’s fallen in love with our little city of bridges, this book will delight you to no end. If you’re trying to grapple with a loss or even just the cruel unpredictability of life, it will bring you the peace you’ve been seeking. Pick this book up from the shelf and let it be your friend. You can count on it.
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.