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Reading Time: 2 minutes‘Sweet Valley High’ author Francine Pascal passed away on July 28 at the age of 92. She was the originator of the series.
On Sunday, in Manhattan, Francine Pascal, who had previously worked as a writer for soap operas and was also the author of the Sweet Valley High books, passed away. Her age was 92.
When asked by the Associated Press on Tuesday, Pascal’s publisher, Penguin Random House, confirmed that the author had passed away. The New York Times was informed by her daughter, Laurie Wenk-Pascal, that her mother passed away at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital as a result of lymphoma.
With the assistance of a group of different authors, Pascal was able to produce 181 Sweet Valley High volumes over the course of twenty years. Young adult novels, the first of which was published in 1983, chronicled the lives of identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield as they negotiated the complexities of adolescent relationships, friendships, and drama in the imaginary suburb of Sweet Valley, which is located in Los Angeles. In addition, there were a number of spin-offs, such as Sweet Valley Senior Year and Sweet Valley University.
More than 200 million copies of the novels have been sold all over the globe. They have been translated into 27 other languages. Between the years 1994 and 1997, the associated television series aired for a total of four seasons, during which time it featured the real-life twins Cynthia and Brittany Daniel.
Prior to authoring her first young adult book, Pascal worked as a journalist and contributed to the television soap opera The Young Marrieds, which aired in the 1960s. She then went on to create the Sweet Valley series.
There was a divorce between Pascal and her first husband, Jerome Offenberg, in the year 1963. They have three children, Jamie being the only one who passed away in the year 2008. Her marriage to John Pascal, who passed away in 1981, took place in 1964. It is her daughters Laurie and Susan, as well as her six grandkids and five great-grandchildren, who are the ones who will carry on her legacy.
