The author of several popular novels for young adult readers, Jean Ferris combines likeable characters, realistic teen problems, and her optimistic outlook to create fiction that has been praised as well-written and engaging. In novels that include Invincible Summer, Across the Grain, and Signs of Life, Ferris portrays teen feelings "convincingly and movingly," "without providing pat resolutions to problems," according to a Publishers Weekly commentator. In addition to her novels featuring modern teens, Ferris has also written several installments in Avon's "American Dreams" series, featuring American privateer Raider Lyons and the beautiful Rosie, and their budding nineteenth-century romance set against a series of adventures, including a voyage to the Yucatan.

Ferris's first novel, Amen, Moses Gardenia, was inspired by the attempted suicides of two teens who were schoolmates of her own children. "I began to wonder how many other kids were feeling this way," the author recalled, "and...