Norma Fox Mazer has garnered numerous awards, as well as high praise from critics, for novels like Silver, After the Rain, and Saturday, the Twelfth of October that depict teenagers in everyday situations, experiencing common problems. "At her best," observed Suzanne Freeman in the Washington Post Book World, "Mazer can cut right to the bone of teenage troubles and then show us how the wounds will heal. She can set down the everyday scenes of her characters' lives in images that are scalpel sharp.... What's apparent throughout all of this is that Mazer has taken great care to get to know the world she writes about. She delves into the very heart of it with a sure and practiced hand." It took many years of discipline for Mazer to become such a writer, and even longer for her to consider herself one; it wasn't until she was writing...