Seasons of the Heart

Lois Duncan is known for award-winning suspense novels, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer. Few people know she has led a secret second life as a poet. From early childhood, Lois chronicled events of her life in verse. At ten, she began submitting her poetry to magazines. Since then, Lois has written hundreds of magazine articles and forty-eight books. She is the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, presented by the American Library Association for an outstanding contribution to literature for young adults. Renowned as a novelist, she kept her poetry notebooks tucked away in a drawer like a secret vice. Generations of readers who grew up on Lois Duncan books have been urging her to write her autobiography. That task seemed formidable until she began to leaf through those notebooks. There, she found herself in every season of her life-a dreamy child, entranced by fairies and magic; an adolescent, embroiled in turbulent romances; a busy young wife and mother; a heartsick divorcee; a remarried, middle-aged housewife, watching children leave the nest; and then, as a grief-stricken mother, struggling to cling to sanity after the murder of her youngest child. Seasons of the Heart is the deeply personal story of an ordinary woman, told in an extraordinary way. It was with a strong sense of kinship that I read Seasons of the Heart. The romanticism of the young girl; the passions, frustrations and heartbreak of motherhood; the quiet joys of aging, all are captured in the deft and disciplined cadence of poetry.-Lois Lowry, twice winner of the Newbery Award