List $26.95

Written by Philip Beard - Performed by Cassandra Morris - Unabridged Nonfiction - 5 COMPACT DISCS - 4.75 hours

Publisher, HighBridge Audio (March 2005)

Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

Praise for this Audio Edition:

"Cassandra Morris crafts a tender narration reflective of Tess’s struggle with guilt and grief. Although the story is heartrending, Morris manages to lift listeners’ spirits with glimpses of Zoe’s humor while revealing Tess’s core as she works through sorrowful reminiscences filled with intimate details at a time of great crisis, personal and global. Morris captures Tess’s spirit, revealing strength of spirit and love." —Audiofile

"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." —Gail Cooke, Amazon.com Top Ten Reviewer

Praise for the Hardcover Edition:

“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 destined to be carried in backpacks and kept in school lockers, referenced in after-school instant messages, discussed passionately in classrooms and lunchrooms, and remembered—years later—as a book that captured the trials of adolescence and the aching numbness of America in the aftermath of 9/11.” —The Press of Atlantic City

“Dear Zoe is a powerful story, told in entirely engaging voice, about how a family gathers itself to move through confusion and tragedy toward discovering itself.” —Frederick Busch, author of Girls and The Night Inspector

“Philip Beard’s instinct for voice is remarkable, and he writes with a compassion for his characters we can’t help but share.” —Lewis Nordan, author of Wolf Whistle and Sharpshooter Blues

“Applause to Philip Beard for giving us Tess DeNunzio—a sweet, wounded, whip-smart survivor—and her irresistible and haunting story, Dear Zoe. This book enchants as it jabs you in the gut.” —Daniel Jones, author of After Lucy

A keenly felt and exquisitely written debut novel that explores the complexities of loss, love, and family.

Philip 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 mean 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 a 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 listeners long after the story is ended.