Norma Klein was born in New York City to Emanuel Klein, a Freudian psychoanalyst, her mother, Sadie Frankel Klein, was an accomplished tennis player; and her younger brother, Victor, became a social worker. The author described her parents as "nonreligious Jews, politically left-wing, intellectual." She lived in New York for most of her life. From age three to thirteen, Klein attended the Dalton School in New York and graduated from Elizabeth Irwin High School in 1956. She went to Cornell University for one year, then to Barnard College where graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Russian in 1960. She earned her master's degree in Slavic languages a from Columbia University in 1963.
Ms. Klein was best known for young-adult works that dealt with family problems, childhood and adolescent sexuality, as well as social issues like racism, sexism and contraception. Her first novel, "Mom, the Wolf Man and Me" (1972), was about the daughter of an unmarried, sexually active woman.
Ms. Klein's subsequent works, which were published by Alfred A. Knopf, Viking, Fawcett, Dutton, Dial and Bantam, included "Taking Sides," "What It's All About," "Angel Face" and "Going Backwards." She frequently published two or three books a year, and most were very successful, according to Frances Foster, her editor at Knopf.
Because of their subject matter, many of Ms. Klein's books sparked considerable controversy, and a 1986 American Library Association survey found that nine of her novels had been removed from libraries. In a 1986 interview with The New York Times, Ms. Klein said: "I'm not a rebel, trying to stir things up just to be provocative. I'm doing it because I feel like writing about real life."
Ms. Klein's adult fiction focused on contemporary couples and families, and her novels included "American Dreams" and "The World As It Is." She also published about 60 short stories, taught fiction at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, and was a board member of PEN.
Some consider her most famous work to be "Sunshine", a book about
Jacquelyn Helton, a 20 year old woman with a weeks-old baby when she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. Her book was later made into a movie.
