Award. Her earliest novels, as well as Notes for Another Life, Sara Will , and Permanent Connections , all won the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults award.
She and her husband, Ben Oshel Bridgers, live in Sylva, North Carolina, and have three children and six grandchildren.
Her writing process âusually begins with a visual impression of a person,â she says. Her central character's identity takes shape as she goes through âa time of questioning, of being receptive to everything I see, hear, read,ââa period of âcreative awarenessâ that can last for months, during which time she takes notes and writes the opening scene.
All of her books are set in North Carolina, though not all are set in the mountains, as are Sara Will, Permanent Connections , and a series of short stories about the same characters.
In this excerpt from Sara Will , the title character is experiencing an upset in the quiet, routine life she's had with her sister, Swanee. Sara has never married and has never lived anywhere except in the ancestral home she shares with her sister. They have recently taken in several relatives, including a young woman with an infant, who arrived on their doorstep with no place else to go. Sara has been reluctant to open her life to the visitors, and she balks at the idea of babysitting while the rest of the family goes to church.
O THER S OURCES TO E XPLORE
P RIMAR Y
Novels: All We Know of Heaven (1996), Keeping Christina (1993), Permanent Connections (1987), Sara Will (1985), Notes for Another Life (1981), All Together Now (1979), Home Before Dark (1976). Autobiographical essays: âNotes from a Guerrilla,â English Journal 88:6 (July 1999), 41â47. âWriting for My Life,â ALAN Review (fall 1995), 1â6.
S ECONDARY
Pamela S. Carroll, âSouthern Literature for Young Adults: The Novels of Sue Ellen Bridgers,â ALAN Review (fall 1990), 10â13. Contemporary Authors (1977), Vols. 65â68, 79. Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series (1992), Vol. 36, 49â52. Ted Hippie, Presenting Sue Ellen Bridgers (1990). Something About the Author (1981), Vol. 22, 56.
S ARA W ILL (1985)
from Chapter 11
So they went, leaving her on the porch with Rachel cradled to her chest. She pulled the blanket snugly around the small body everywhere cold could seep in and walked out into the yard. The baby was quiet, fed, groggy, content. She didn't seem to know or care in whose arms she nestled. Held out at armsâ length she would have screamed, panicked by instinctive fear of falling, but secure within a boundary, any boundary, she was at peace.
It's the same with me, Sara thought. Here in her front yard staring at the receding bubble of dust behind the truck, she felt herself standing on the edge of her life looking out into what she had always imagined was a rocky place, treacherous with slippery boulders and rising water.
She had seen the valley flooded, had stood alone on the ridge every evening for a month and watched the rising water enveloping familiar places. The water had been alive and powerful. She had been careful not to slip. It was the same with her life; she had thought she would drown out there among people, pushed under by obligations, held fast by concerns she would collect like stones. She had hung back, clinging to the old and familiar which, although chipped, faded, practically useless, offered no resistance. She had fashioned the shape of things, her life here, Swanee's there, the two connecting only at mealtimes or when some minor dilemma faced them simultaneously. She had controlled all the possibilities except natural disasters, illness, and death and had not wanted to look beyond the solitary confinement she faced each morning.
Now, expecting the worst, she was forced to see in place of her dark vision, her own landscape painfully ragged and in need of repair. She saw dilapidated gates, the dry pond bed grown up, the
She and her husband, Ben Oshel Bridgers, live in Sylva, North Carolina, and have three children and six grandchildren.
Her writing process âusually begins with a visual impression of a person,â she says. Her central character's identity takes shape as she goes through âa time of questioning, of being receptive to everything I see, hear, read,ââa period of âcreative awarenessâ that can last for months, during which time she takes notes and writes the opening scene.
All of her books are set in North Carolina, though not all are set in the mountains, as are Sara Will, Permanent Connections , and a series of short stories about the same characters.
In this excerpt from Sara Will , the title character is experiencing an upset in the quiet, routine life she's had with her sister, Swanee. Sara has never married and has never lived anywhere except in the ancestral home she shares with her sister. They have recently taken in several relatives, including a young woman with an infant, who arrived on their doorstep with no place else to go. Sara has been reluctant to open her life to the visitors, and she balks at the idea of babysitting while the rest of the family goes to church.
O THER S OURCES TO E XPLORE
P RIMAR Y
Novels: All We Know of Heaven (1996), Keeping Christina (1993), Permanent Connections (1987), Sara Will (1985), Notes for Another Life (1981), All Together Now (1979), Home Before Dark (1976). Autobiographical essays: âNotes from a Guerrilla,â English Journal 88:6 (July 1999), 41â47. âWriting for My Life,â ALAN Review (fall 1995), 1â6.
S ECONDARY
Pamela S. Carroll, âSouthern Literature for Young Adults: The Novels of Sue Ellen Bridgers,â ALAN Review (fall 1990), 10â13. Contemporary Authors (1977), Vols. 65â68, 79. Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series (1992), Vol. 36, 49â52. Ted Hippie, Presenting Sue Ellen Bridgers (1990). Something About the Author (1981), Vol. 22, 56.
S ARA W ILL (1985)
from Chapter 11
So they went, leaving her on the porch with Rachel cradled to her chest. She pulled the blanket snugly around the small body everywhere cold could seep in and walked out into the yard. The baby was quiet, fed, groggy, content. She didn't seem to know or care in whose arms she nestled. Held out at armsâ length she would have screamed, panicked by instinctive fear of falling, but secure within a boundary, any boundary, she was at peace.
It's the same with me, Sara thought. Here in her front yard staring at the receding bubble of dust behind the truck, she felt herself standing on the edge of her life looking out into what she had always imagined was a rocky place, treacherous with slippery boulders and rising water.
She had seen the valley flooded, had stood alone on the ridge every evening for a month and watched the rising water enveloping familiar places. The water had been alive and powerful. She had been careful not to slip. It was the same with her life; she had thought she would drown out there among people, pushed under by obligations, held fast by concerns she would collect like stones. She had hung back, clinging to the old and familiar which, although chipped, faded, practically useless, offered no resistance. She had fashioned the shape of things, her life here, Swanee's there, the two connecting only at mealtimes or when some minor dilemma faced them simultaneously. She had controlled all the possibilities except natural disasters, illness, and death and had not wanted to look beyond the solitary confinement she faced each morning.
Now, expecting the worst, she was forced to see in place of her dark vision, her own landscape painfully ragged and in need of repair. She saw dilapidated gates, the dry pond bed grown up, the
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