A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry

First published: 1977; illustrated

Subjects: Coming-of-age, death, family, and health and illness

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism and psychological realism

Time of work: The 1970’s

Recommended Ages: 10-15

Locale: Rural Maine

Principal Characters:

• Meg Chalmers, a thirteen-year-old budding photographer who must face the illness and death of her older sister
• Molly Chalmers, Meg’s seemingly perfect fifteen-year-old sister, who develops leukemia
• Dr. Charles Chalmers, their father, an English professor who has temporarily moved his family to the countryside in order to finish writing a book
• Lydia Chalmers, their mother
• Will Banks, the owner of the house that the Chalmers are renting for the summer, who befriends Meg
• Ben Brady, a student from Harvard University
• Maria Abbott, Ben’s wife
• Happy William Abbott-Brady, Ben and Maria’s infant son
• Martin Huntington, Will’s nephew, a lawyer

Form and Content

Lois Lowry’s first novel, A Summer to Die, was inspired by her relationship with her older sister, Helen, who eventually died of cancer. The book is narrated by thirteen-year-old Meg Chalmers, an artist and budding photographer, and treats the events of a pivotal year in her life. During that year, Meg is forced to confront jealousy and guilt, death and grief, as she comes to terms with the loss of her sister. At the same time, she begins to discover her own self-worth by developing her talents and making new friends.

As the novel begins, Meg feels inadequate compared to her seemingly perfect fifteen-year-old sister, Molly, an attractive cheerleader for whom everything seems to come easily. When their father, an English professor, moves the family to a small farmhouse in the country, both girls are unhappy. Meg must give up her Saturday morning photography classes, and Molly must quit cheerleading. In addition, the two girls are forced to share a room for the first time, which creates further tension, provoking Molly to draw a line down the middle of their room.

In February, Meg finds some consolation in helping her father build a darkroom so that she can develop her own photographs. One day in March, after Molly and Meg have had another argument, Molly begins to feel very ill and is rushed to a hospital in Portland, Maine. When Molly returns home, she seems weak and depressed. When Molly is hospitalized again, Meg blames herself for telling their mother that her sister’s legs are covered with red spots. Eventually, Meg’s parents reveal that Molly has acute myelogenous leukemia. When Meg visits Molly in the hospital to tell her about the birth of their neighbors’ infant, she feels older than her sister, who is too weak to respond with more than a smile. Two weeks later, Molly dies, and Meg believes that things will never be the same again.

During Molly’s illness, Meg learns to appreciate her sister and grows both as an individual and as an artist. In part, this change is the result of her friendship with three adults. These friends include a young married couple, Ben Brady and Maria Abbott, who are renting a house while Ben works on a thesis for a degree at Harvard University. Meg shares in their joy when she photographs the birth of their baby, Happy William Brady-Abbott, which takes place while Molly is hospitalized.

Even more important, however, is Meg’s friendship with Will Banks, the seventy-year-old owner of the house that the Chalmers are renting. Will encourages Meg’s interest in photography, lending her an old camera and lenses. As Meg teaches Will what she knows about photography, she learns to look more closely at the world around her. At the end of the novel, after Molly has died, a photograph that Will has taken of Meg appears in an exhibition at her father’s university. Meg sees some of her sister in her own image and realizes that Molly will live on through her and her memories. When Meg tells Will that he has made her feel beautiful, he responds that she was beautiful all along.

Critical Context

A Summer to Die, Lois Lowry’s first attempt at writing for children, was a success with both critics and young readers and looked forward to many of Lowry’s other award-winning books. It was named to the Horn Book Honor List and received the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award and state book awards from California and Massachusetts, and it was translated into nine languages. It anticipates Lowry’s autobiographical Autumn Street (1980), whose young protagonist encounters both birth and death among her family and friends, and Anastasia Krupnik (1979) and The Giver (1993), which deal with the both the pain and value of memory. While the plot of A Summer to Die recalls other juvenile books about death published in the early 1970’s—such as Doris Buchanan Smith’s A Taste of Blackberries (1973), Constance C. Greene’s Beat the Turtle Drum (1976), and Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia (1977)—its focus on terminal illness and a close, loving family is distinctive. Much of the continued popularity of A Summer to Die comes from its spare and simple style, its likable and believable protagonist, and its honest treatment of sibling rivalry, grief, and friendship.