A Summer to Die By Lois Lowry Book Review by Liezl Escaño Lopez

“It’s unfair.”

This was the famous line that the narrator, Meg Chalmers, utters often in the story.

“A Summer to Die” written by Lois Lowry was often suspected to be a biography of her sister but as the author says some of it were true but the rest were fiction. This was her first book before she wrote her famous trilogy “The Giver”,"Gathering Blue," and "The Messenger."

The story mainly discusses a usual sister’s relationship and how a family accepts the reality about the death of their loved one.

Margaret “Meg” Chalmers narrates the story expressing how she envies her older sister Molly Chalmers who seemed to get all the attention and beauty while she gets the left over. A common issue between siblings. They frequently argues on anything practically because they are really different, Molly being the happy, easy girl like her Mom and Meg being the serious deep person like her Dad.

As their father seeks for a quiet place to write his book, the family has to move to the country where a big change is waiting ahead of them, leaving their house in town where they had grown up. Adjusting to their new environment and neighbors, Meg seemed to have a difficulty to adapt while her sister Molly already gained new friends as well as new boyfriend who is member of the varsity in school. But Meg found a friend in the presence of Will who is the owner of their house. Meg being interested in photography his father built him a darkroom where she can develop whatever her camera captures. Meg and Will share same interest.

Ordinary days have passed. Everyone is busy in their own business, Mother busy sewing her quilt, Dad finishing his book, Molly having fun with her friends and Meg focused on her darkroom until one night everything is about to change. One suspicious night, Meg woke up and saw her sister drowned in her own blood. Their parents brought Molly at the hospital while Meg was left at home still bothered and scared of what she just saw.


Molly went back to home but the old Molly was gone and seemed to be a stranger as time prolongs. She is losing her hair gradually due to the pills she is taking. A new couple who was about to have a child occupied the near house beside the Chalmer’s house. The upcoming baby and her new found interest in flowers seemed to lighten up Molly. Meg unaware of everything of what really is going on was about to discover that her sister whom she envy the most is about to die because of a disease named Leukemia. These were the time that the family went through difficult stage because they are just to lose a loved one. Accepting the reality was hard for the family. And the day came when Molly finally closed her eyes and never wake up. They went back to town and left all their memories in the country.

In the end of this story the narrator realizes how beautiful she is and that only happy and good memories are those will be left behind by Molly.

This story was really heart-warming because it depicts reality about true issues between sisters and the difficulty in accepting the lost of loved one.

As someone who seemed to relate from the story in particular on how Meg envies her sister, I can really say that this story is great showing the beauty of life and how family faces together the trial. Indeed, only those happy and good memories will be remembered and those are the ones that heal the wounded and emptied heart of the left ones.