Frank Portman

Frank Portman combines novel writing with songwriting and guitar, performing as Dr. Frank in the punk band the Mr. T Experience. Andromeda Klein, his second teen novel, follows an isolated high school student fascinated by tarot, ceremonial traditions, and her local library's neglected books. After her friend Daisy dies and an older romantic interest disappears, Andromeda finds patterns between her readings and events around her. Portman uses her occult knowledge for comedy and for a serious portrait of grief, loneliness, censorship, and adolescent self-invention. Delacorte Press published Andromeda Klein in 2009. Listening Library released the unabridged audiobook the same year, narrated by Deirdre Lovejoy. The book shares a fictional setting with Portman's earlier King Dork, although it follows different characters rather than continuing that plot. His experience writing witty, tightly phrased punk songs carries into the prose, while Andromeda's exacting research gives the story a distinctive rhythm of footnotes, symbols, private jokes, and interpretations that may or may not be supernatural.