Lois Lowry was born a middle child of three. She was a solitary child and mostly enjoyed the world of books and imagination.
Because her father was an Army dentist, they moved around a lot. She lived in Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Tokyo, and New York until she started Brown University in Rhode Island. By that time, her family lived in Washington, D.C.

She had just turned nineteen when she married a Naval officer and began living in California. She had two sons, two daughters, and enrolled in the University of Southern Maine to get her degree and continue on to graduate school. That was when she began writing professionally, as she had always wanted.

After her marriage ended in 1977, she settled into the life she has lived ever since. Today she is back in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For a change of scenery she and her 3 children (her older son, who was a fighter pilot, died) spend time in Maine, where they own an old farmhouse.

Her books have varied in content and style. A Summer to Die, her first book, was a retelling of the early death of her sister.  Here is a list of some of her books:
A Summer To Die
Number The Stars
The Giver
Gathering Blue
Messenger