Yet the novel has been embraced by readers, especially book clubs. She remembers a marketing meeting at her publisher's where someone said the characters: "a grumpy old woman and a disaffected Goth teenager" don't make for "great demographics." It's based on a slice of little-known history that Kline says "is buried in plain sight." It weaves the stories of a 17-year-old troubled girl, a Penobscot Indian who is aging out of foster care, and her unlikely friendship with a 91-year-old woman, an Irish immigrant who, as a child, rode an orphan train from New York to Minnesota. It's set in present-day Maine and Depression-era Minnesota. With 1.1 million copies sold in print and digital editions, Orphan Train is on its way to being this year's sleeper hit. That puts her ahead of novels by Nora Roberts, John Grisham and James Patterson, or, as Kline puts it, "some big, big names." 13 on USA TODAY's list of the top-selling books for the first half of 2014. Kline says her publisher, William Morrow, dangled a bonus if it sold 55,000 copies, prompting her agent to quip, "We can dream."īut Kline, 50, was wide awake when Orphan Train appeared at No. Her expectations for her fifth novel, Orphan Train, were modest when it was released in April 2013. Her last novel, Bird in Hand (2009), about the effects of an accident on two marriages, sold fewer than 10,000 copies. History, her mom English.) Despite good reviews, she never had a best seller.
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