Stranger With My Face

Stranger with My Face by Lois Duncan is a 1981 horror novel for young adults. The central character is Laurie Stratton. Laurie has been seen by people in places where she has not been. She finds out that she has an identical twin sister, Lia, from whom she was separated at birth and who has been in Laurie’s town via astral projection. Astral projection is a phenomenon by which she sends her soul outside of her body. Lia takes control of Laurie’s body, leading Laurie to seek ways of regaining control of her body. A well-respected book, Stranger with My Face was honored from coast to coast with prizes, including the Massachusetts Children’s Book Award and the California Young Reader Medal.

Laurie is seventeen years old when the unusual appearances begin to occur. For example, Laurie has recently begun dating Gordon, one of the popular boys in her high school. One night, she breaks a date with him due to illness. The next day in school she finds that her friends are mad at her because they believe they saw her out with another boy, even though she knows she never left her house. Her sister Megan refers to the spirit as Laurie’s “ghosty”; eventually the spirit makes contact with Laurie, identifying herself as her sister Lia. Laurie’s friend Helen Tuttle suggests that Lia is using astral projection through which the soul can travel anywhere in the universe it chooses. Helen is injured one day on her way home as the result of an accident in which Lia makes her slip and fall on ice. Helen’s father brings Laurie a Christmas gift that Helen had ready for Laurie before her accident. The gift is a necklace with a turquoise eagle, which is supposed to ward off evil spirits.

At the same time, the situation is causing difficulties within Laurie’s family. She asks her parents, who confirm that she had been adopted. At the time of the adoption, her parents were told that they would never be able to have children. They had planned, even though it would have been a financial hardship, to adopt both Laurie and Lia, but once they held Lia, something felt wrong and they adopted only Laurie. Although they tell Laurie the truth about her past, they are unhappy with her as they believe she was looking through their private papers and discovered her adoption papers. This is not true, but Laurie cannot tell them that she learned about it from her sister’s spirit, so they accuse her of lying



Laurie’s friend Jeff Rankin plans, on Christmas Eve, to bring Laurie some books about astral projection that Helen had purchased for her. As he reaches some rocks in front of Laurie’s house, he sees someone he believes to be Laurie waving to him and he approaches. As he does, Jeff falls into a cavern and breaks his leg. The next day, Laurie finds the books on the rocks and falls into the cavern as she searches for Jeff. In an attempt to get help, Laurie uses astral projection to lift her spirit up to the rocks near the house. Laurie’s brother Neal sees her spirit disappear over the rocks. He assumes that Laurie fell and gets their father who then locates Laurie in the cavern. While Jeff is in the hospital, Laurie’s necklace is found stuck on the zipper of his coat. When Jeff realizes that the clasp of the necklace is broken, he decides that he will fix it before returning it to Laurie.

Meanwhile, Laurie projects herself into the psychiatric hospital where Lia is staying. There, she overhears nurses say that Lia caused her adopted sister, Katherine Abbott, to fall off a cliff leading to her death. Laurie’s spirit returns to her house where she finds that Lia has taken control of her body. Megan realizes that Laurie is not acting like herself and suspects that she is not in control of her body. Some of the signs that she picks up on include Laurie eating white meat and making unkind remarks about other people. Megan and Jeff meet with Lia. Jeff tries to give Lia the necklace that he has repaired. Lia pushes it out of his hand, but Megan gets it and throws it at Laurie’s body. The necklace succeeds in driving Lia’s spirit out of Laurie’s body giving Laurie control of her body once again. Laurie can still feel the presence of Lia even after Lia’s spirit returns to its rightful body and Lia is cremated.

In a 2016 obituary for Lois Duncan, The Washington Post cited her as one of the pioneers of the young adult genre of literature, “Along with S.E. Hinton, Judy Blume, and Robert Cormier, Ms. Duncan was credited with helping establish the genre of young-adult fiction-literature carefully tailored for readers who are neither children nor grown-ups, who know more than it may seem but not enough to make their way in the world. Unlike Blume, who took her mainly female protagonists through ordinary, if wrenching, experiences such as puberty, young love and parental divorce, Ms. Duncan plucked her characters from normalcy and placed them in extraordinary, often dark circumstances.”