Until her death in 1989, Norma Klein was considered by many critics to be an immensely gifted and skillful writer who was popular with readers of all ages--both young and old. While she garnered a loyal and significant audience for her fiction for adults, Klein was best known for her novels for young adults. In these enormously popular books, Klein attempted to realistically portray contemporary young people as they dealt with such problems as divorce, young love, budding adolescent sexuality, and such social issues as racism, sexism, and contraception. A very prolific author, Klein published on the average of two or three books a year for most of her professional writing career, in addition to over sixty short stories.

Klein began her writing career composing short stories for literary quarterlies. Although she loved writing short stories and felt very suited to this literary genre, Klein found these stories generally...