Sue Ellen Bridgers's novels provide young adult readers with realistic portrayals of life in the small towns of the South, where, it is said, "people take care of you when you're sick and talk about you when you're well." The characters in all four of Bridgers's novels are products of their rural roots. Though they are mostly good people--warm, generous, compassionate, and by city standards unsophisticated--they are not simple, nor are their lives uncomplex, and, because Bridgers is a good storyteller, readers are moved by their joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures.

The daughter of Wayland L. and Elizabeth Abbott Hunsucker, Sue Ellen Bridgers was born in Greenville, in eastern North Carolina, and was reared a few miles away in the small town of Winterville. She has spent most of her life in North Carolina, went to school there, and received her B.A. from Western Carolina University...