Francine Pascal, creator of popular 'Sweet Valley High' young adult books, dies at 92
Francine Pascal, the creator of the long-running and bestselling Sweet Valley High series of young adult books, has died. She was 92.
Her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal said Pascal's death at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan was caused by lymphoma, according to the New York Times.
Lymphoma is a type of cancer that begins in lymphocytes, the infection-fighting cells of the immune system. Lymphocytes change and grow out of control.
Pascal was born Francine Paula Rubin on May 13, 1932, in Manhattan to William and Kate Rubin and grew up in Jamaica in Queens.
She studied journalism at New York University and worked as a freelance writer for gossipy magazines like True Confessions and Modern Screen, and later Cosmopolitan and Ladies’ Home Journal.
She first married Jerome Offenberg and divorced in 1963. She married journalist John Pascal a year later, though he died in 1981. John was her co-writer for the soap opera The Young Marrieds and the book for the Broadway musical George M!.
Pascal wrote her first young-adult novels in the '70s, beginning with Hangin' Out with Cici in 1977. It was turned into an afternoon television special and led to a sequel.
Her other young-adult novels include My First Love and Other Disasters in 1979 and The Hand-Me-Down Kid in 1980.
Following her books' success, she pitched an idea for a soap opera TV series about high school teenagers but networks "were not interested," deeming the story "too girly."
But that rejection was what would become Pascal's magnum opus Sweet Valley High. It revolves around the lives of identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, who attend high school in the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Sweet Valley.
Debuting in 1983, the books have an instant charm with their varsity-style lettering and soft-focus illustrations.
The narratives, meanwhile, are characterized by gossip-fueled storylines, melodramatic plot twists, and cliffhanger endings.
The series had taken over the young-adult book market in the coming years.
It spawned multiple spin-offs, ran for 20 years, was translated to 27 languages, and sold over 150 million copies, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Sequels The Sweet Valley Confidential and The Sweet Life, published in 2011 and 2012 respectively, followed the lives of the girls as adults. A Sweet Valley High TV series also ran from 1994 to 1997.
Pascal wrote the first 12 Sweet Valley High books before working with a team of writers to keep a steady, rapid publication pace of mostly a book per month, the Times reported.
She would draft a detailed outline, then hand it to a writer who would rely on what she called her “bible," a compendium of descriptions of the personalities, settings, and dense web of relationships that defined life in Sweet Valley.
The Sweet Valley High helped define pop culture, shaping speech patterns and influencing clothing, TV shows, movies, and books.
Pascal's non-Sweet Valley High projects include the two adult novels Save Johanna! in 1981 and If Wishes Were Horses in 1994. The latter is a fictionalized memoir about her life with John Pascal.
In 1999, she began another young adult series called Fearless, about a girl named Gaia Moore who was born without the "fear gene" and fights crime. She is a crack shot in rifle and a black belter in karate.
Pascal is survived by her daughters, Wenk-Pascal and Susan Johansson, her six grandchildren, and her five great-grandchildren.