Dear Zoe

Tess DeNunzio is the 15-year-old first-person narrator of Dear Zoe, an intelligent, empathic girl who is coping with the loss of her younger half-sister Zoe by writing the letters that make up the book. In some ways, Tess is a typical adolescent in that she’s obsessed with makeup and exploring her sexuality; in other ways, Tess’s experience is unique in that she’s coping with devastating loss—made even more devastating by the fact that Zoe was killed on September 11. At the beginning of the book, Tess is isolated in her experience of her grief, cut off from her family, feeling disconnected and alone. Even before Zoe’s death, Tess occupied a unique role in her family: The much older half-sister to two girls, Tess was sometimes placed in the role of third parent as much as older sister. Tess is honest and emotionally intuitive, particularly when it comes to understanding her family dynamics and her family members.

Much of the book centers on Tess’s coming of age and coming to terms with her grief. Though she longs to be understood and to be “seen,” she also represses her grief and keeps it to herself, out of sadness and out of her presumed role in the death of her younger sister in a hit-and-run accident.