Test Pattern

The arrival of a new TV in a 1950s Virginia household has strange effects on an 11-year-old and her parents in this "fable worthy of The Twilight Zone" (Glamour).

"Energetic, imaginative and laugh out loud funny. . . . All the charm of your favorite I Love Lucy re-run mixed with all the supernatural strangeness of an X-Files episode." —Cosmopolitan

When a new TV set arrives in the Palmer household in Newport News, Virginia, in 1954, change is in the wind. Eleven-year-old Cassie discovers that she—and only she—can see glimpses of the future within the hypnotic test pattern: snippets from President Kennedy's assassination, the landing on the moon, the O.J. Simpson trial. Meanwhile, her family goes haywire. Her mother decides to pursue her dream of becoming a famous tap dancer, while her shipyard-worker father plunges into depression.

Brilliantly re-creating the innocence and energy of that time, this magical tale offers a witty reflection on the troubled path to fame, a child's awakening to the world, and the tangled web of the family.

"This surreal mid-century tale of a mom who feels like "Lucy gone bad" and the family left in her wake entertains as surely as a parallel-universe episode of Ozzie and Harriet." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Klein's book is more magical realism than science fiction. She expertly conjures the bittersweet story of a blue-collar family in distress of lost dreams and a young girl's coming of age. Test Pattern is a marvelous, clever, and funny and sad novel." —Booklist (starred review)

"I devoured this compelling, funny and bittersweet story. I can't wait for Klein to write another one." —Dave Barry, humor columnist and novelist