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.