Francine Pascal, creator of the beloved ‘Sweet Valley High’ books, dies at 92

Francine Pascal, a onetime soap opera writer whose “Sweet Valley High” novels and the ongoing adventures of twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and other teens captivated millions of young readers, has died at age 92.

Pascal died Sunday, her publisher, Penguin Random House, said. It did not immediately have additional information Tuesday, but the New York Times reported that Pascal died from lymphoma.

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Starting in 1983, Pascal oversaw the completion of more than 150 “Sweet Valley High” stories. They were set in an imaginary Los Angeles suburb, one of “gently rolling hills” with a “fantastic white sand beach” nearby. In bestsellers such as “Double Love,” “Power Play” and “All Night Long,” the Wakefield girls and their schoolmates navigate dating, family conflicts, sibling rivalries, more troubling themes such as race, divorce and mortality, and even vampires and werewolves.

“Sweet Valley is the essence of high school,” Pascal told People magazine in 1988. “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.”

Her books sold more than 200 million copies and included “Sweet Valley” spinoffs and sequels. After the initial novels took off, Pascal brought in outside writers, providing them with general outlines and a “bible” of the characters.

“It was mostly very young, new writers,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. “The story outlines weren’t chapter by chapter, more like acts: You get from here to here in the first quarter, then you have to get from here to here. Don’t forget, they already had the bible, where I had written deeply into the lives of the twins and their backgrounds. With the characters, you knew what they liked, you knew what the walls in their room (looked like), every single thing about them.”

Born Francine Paula Rubin on May 13, 1932, Pascal was a New York City native who studied journalism at New York University, wrote for such magazines as Cosmopolitan and Ladies’ Home Journal and, with her second husband, John Pascal, found work in the 1960s writing for the ABC soap opera “The Young Marrieds.” Rather than relocate to Los Angeles with the show when the network asked, the Pascals returned to journalism.

Then when Francine Pascal began thinking of creating her own series, she took a friend’s advice and developed what became the Sweet Valley books.

The concept: “Dallas” for young people. The main characters: twin sisters, one mischievous (Jessica) and the other more sensible (Elizabeth).

“There are a lot of twins in my life,” she told EW. “My sister-in-law was a twin. People are always fascinated by twins. You’ll never be alone.”

Pascal and her first husband, Jerome Offenberg, divorced in 1963. They had three daughters, one of whom, Jamie, died in 2008. John Pascal died in 1981.

A Los Angeles Times staff writer contributed to this report.