- ‘Sweet Valley High’ creator Francine Pascal died on July 28 at the age of 92.
- Her death has been attributed to lymphoma.
- Pascal is celebrated as the creator of the widely popular ‘Sweet Valley High’ book series, which has sold hundreds of millions of copies.
On July 28, Francine Pascal died. She was 92 when she passed away at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Her cause of death has been attributed to lymphoma. Her daughter, Laurie Wenk-Pascal, confirmed news of Pascal’s death to the New York Times.
Francine Pascal is remembered as an author whose most beloved creation is the Sweet Valley High young adult collection. The series follows twin sisters Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, residents of the fictional California suburb of Sweet Valley. The series has sold over 200 million copies.
Beloved author Francine Pascal has died
Pascal was born in New York City, New York, on May 13, 1932, as Francine Paula Rubin. Born to an auctioneer father, Pascal studied journalism at New York University and started as a writer working for magazines. Some places of employment include Modern Screen, True Confessions, Ladies’ Home Journal, and even Cosmopolitan.
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She was briefly married to Jerome Offenberg, from 1958 to 1963. The year after the divorce, she found lasting love with fellow writer John Pascal, with whom she remained until his death in ’81. John was a playwright, journalist, screenwriter, and author, not too dissimilar from his wife.
Sweet in the valley
As the ’60s marched on into the ’70s, Pascal’s career as a writer expanded to include soap operas and Broadway plays. By 1977, she released her first book, Hangin’ Out With Cici. It later became an ABC Afterschool Special. A friend of hers who worked in publishing suggested writing something aimed at older audiences, specifically teens.
So began the lives of Jessica and Elizabeth. Pascal chose to focus on twins specifically because she “always had a fascination with twins. The trick is to think of Elizabeth and Jessica as the good and bad sides of one person.”
The stories told in Sweet Valley would encompass 181 books, the first 12 of which were written by Pascal herself. After that, she recruited a team of ghostwriters to continue following Jessica and Elizabeth’s lives.
“Sweet Valley is the essence of high school,” Pascal reflected in a 1988 interview with People. “It’s that moment before reality hits, when you really do believe in the romantic values — sacrifice, love, loyalty, friendship — before you get jaded and slip off into adulthood.” Indeed, the franchise sold over 200 million books and most recently spawned a graphic novel called Sweet Valley Twins, published in 2022.
The franchise has been a part of countless fans’ lives, and it is for this reason a representative for St. Martin’s Publishing Group said in a statement, “St. Martin’s is proud to have been a publisher of Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High series whose iconic and beloved characters captivated generations of teens and adults.”
Rest in peace, Francine Pascal.
