Every other weekend, Hope and Eden - backpacks, Walkmans, and homework in hand - wait for their father to pick them up, as he always does, at a strip-mall bus stop. It’s the divorce shuffle; they’re used to it. Only this weekend, he’s screwed up, forgotten, and their world will irrevocably change when a stranger lures them into his truck with a false story and smile. More than twenty years later, Hope is that classic New York failure: a playwright with only one play produced long ago, newly evicted from an illegal sublet, working a humiliating temp job. Eden has long distanced herself from her family, and no one seems to know where she is. When the man who abducted them is up for parole, the girls might be able to offer testimony to keep him jailed. Hope sets out to find her sister - and to find herself - and it becomes the journey of a lifetime, taking her from hippie communes to cities across the country. Suspenseful and moving, Eden asks: How much do our pasts define us, and what price do we pay if we break free? AUTHOR: Andrea Kleine is the author of the novel Calf, which was named one of the best books of 2015 by Publishers Weekly. She is a five-time MacDowell Colony Fellow and the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. A performance artist, essayist and novelist. SELLING POINTS: . Kleine’s first novel was well received, but it was published by a small press, without much support. Eden’s strong hook will help us grow Kleine’s critical success and translate it into sales success. . Andrea Kleine is a performance artist and a writer. She is a five-time MacDowell Colony Fellow and the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and she has received numerous commissions, grants, and awards, including support from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Slamdance Film Festival, the IFP Market, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Music Fund. She has been a Movement Research artist-in-residence, a Mabou Mines artist-in-residence, a Montalvo Art Center literary fellow, and a Hermitage Artist fellow. . This sisters-separated-by-a-traumatic-event hook is perfect for book clubs: Hope and Eden are forever bound by their childhoods, but their responses to the trauma in their lives led them in completely different directions. Will they be able to reconcile?
