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 lifefrom 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.