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Stranger With My Face

Book Summary
Awards/Nominations
Book Excerpt
Extra Information

Summary

Seventeen-year-old Laurie Stratton is really starting to enjoy her life. She loves her family and has recently started dating a popular and handsome classmate named Gordon Ahearn. But then strange things start to happen to Laurie. Gordon says he saw her out walking on the beach on a night that she knows she was at home with the flu. Her father says he saw her at the house, when she knows she was at school. Is a mysterious identical stranger trying to take over Laurie's life?

Awards & Nominations

1981: Ethical Culture School Book Award
1981: ALA Best Book for Young Adults
1981: New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year
1981: Library of Congress' Best Books citation
1981: New Mexico Press Zia Award
1981: English Teacher's Journal and University of Iowa's Best Books of the Year for Young Adults citation
1982: Best Novel Award, National League of American Pen Women
1983: Ethical Culter School Award
1984: California Young Readers Award
1984: South Carolina Young Readers Award Indiana Young Hoosier Award
1986: Nominated for Iowa Young Readers Award
1984: Nominated for Arizona Young Readers Award
1985: Nominated for Florida "Sunshine Authors" Young Readers Award
1986: Nominated for Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award
1986: Top Teen Read List in England, selected by teenagers

Excerpt

My name is Laurie Stratton. I am seventeen years old, and I live at the Cliff House on northern tip of Brighton Island. My parents moved here with me when I was four. My father is a science fiction writer, and my mother is an artist, so this out-of-the-mainstream existence suits them well. They bought this house from the descendants of the Brighton family, who at one time owned the island, and had it remodeled to fit their needs. Except for an occassional trip down to the village for groceries and mail, they seldom leave.

"Why go back to the rate race on the mainland," asks Dad, "when we have everything we need right here?"

There was a time when I, too, loved Cliff House. It perched high on a ledge or rock that hangs out over the ocean, and from the balcony off my bedroom I can look out into forever. In the summer the skies are such a brilliant blue that they seem to have been painted on cardboard, and the water varies from light blue to dark blue, to aqua, to emerald green. The island is fun in the summer. The cottages at the south end fill up with vacationers, and the Yacht Club has sailing races, and the Tennis Club has tournaments, and young men from Harvard and Yale and Princeton come swarming out from the mainland to compete for the jobs as lifeguards. The Bringhton Inn imports live music on the weekends, so there is a place for dancing, and the roads are filled with cyclists, and the beaches with picnickers, and the warm, sweet air with sound of laughter and smell of suntan oil.

In the winter the scene changes. The gray moves in, and with it, the cold. We have the place to ourselves then--my family and I, and the people in the villages.

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It's the villagers who gave our home its name. From the village you can look across the inlet and see it hanging out against the sky like an extension of the cliff on which it stands. The Brightons designed the house so that every room, no matter how small, has a window overlooking the sea. My mother's studio is at the top of the house, angled so that it is flooded with north light, and my father's office downstairs off the kitchen. On the middle level there is a huge, heavy-beamed living room with a stone fireplace at the far end, and the three bedrooms climb the side of the house like a star steps, fitting the curve of the cliff. The top most room is mine--then comes my parents--and the third, which was originally to be a guest room belongs to my younger brother and sister.

"If we expected them, we would have made better arrangements," says my mother with a laugh, for I was supposed to have been an only child.

So, I live at the Cliff House with my parents, and my brother, Neal, who is eleven, and my sister, Megan, who is eight.

And with someone else.

It is a long time since I have seen her, but I know she is her. In the bed at night, above the sound of the surf of rocks beneath my window, I hear very faintly the rustle of her passage down the hall. She moves softly, but I can hear, for I am used to the sound of her.

She pauses outside my door.

In my dreams I hear her voice. But, are they dreams? Or in the months since I saw her last has her voice become so slight that this is the only way she can reach me?

I blame you, she whispers. Only you.

I'm not afraid of her any longer, but her presence here disturbs me. Even the beauty of the ocean is no solace. I stand at my window and star out the sun-dappled waves of the summer sea, and I brace myself as though against an icy wind.

My parents worry about me. They don't understand what has happened. Of the three people I could talk to, two are gone, and the third is very young.

I, too, will be leaving. That is why I am writing this. When I got I want to leave it all behind me--Cliff House, my memories and her. To do that, though, I first must pour the story from my mind into another vehicle.

I do not have my father's talent in writing. That went to Megan, just as my mother's artistic talent went to Neal. But since there is no one here to whom I can really talk, I have no choice but to set my tale on the paper.

I hope I can be finished before September...

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Extra Information

Stranger With My Face is one of Lois Duncan's favorite novels.

Last Modified: Monday, 08/17/09