Norma Klein was born on May 13, 1938, in New York City. She grew up on Manhattan Island and died after a brief illness on April 25, 1989, also in New York City. She was the daughter of Emanuel Klein, a Freudian psychoanalyst, and Sadie Klein. She was extremely close to her father, and he was devoted to her. According to her biographers, their closeness caused severe conflicts in the family, since Norma's mother and her only sibling, Victor, felt excluded by the father-daughter relationship. When her father died in 1977, Klein experienced what she called a "breakdown." Although as an adult she became disenchanted with Freudian psychoanalysis, her interest in using her fiction to help adolescents with their problems surely stems in large part from her interaction with her father.

Klein attended Dalton School from age three to thirteen, and Elizabeth Irwin School during her high school years...