It’s a wonder that Bass Harbor writer Christina Baker Kline has time to sleep. The author of the hit novel “The Way Life Should Be” – which has been released in paperback and recently was picked by Target stores as a featured selection – is a whirl of constant motion.

Bass Harbor writer Christina Baker Kline, author of “The Way Life Should Be,” is schedule for a series of appearances at area bookstores this week.—EARL BRECHLIN PHOTO

Oh, and lets not forget the writing.

Passionate yet not overly intense, with the beguiling and gentile nature of a woman of unfathomable confidence, she approaches life with an articulate curiosity that hints of a person in a hurry to get somewhere; although the ultimate destination is far from certain and is, in and of itself, immaterial.

This summer the focus is on her book “About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror,” which she co-edited with Anne Burt. That book, released in June, consists of essays by women of varying ages and races – and from many different walks of life – candidly writing about what they observe when they take a good long look in the mirror. The thoughts they share run the gamut from funny, to inspiring to heartbreaking.

But the author of “Desire Lines,” and “Sweet Water,” (not to be confused with the novel “Sweetwater” by Mount Desert novelist Roxana Robinson), is not one to rest on her laurels. She recently completed the manuscript for a new novel, which, for the time being, is titled “Four-Way Stop.”

“I was working on it before I wrote “The Way Life Should Be,” and I went back to it after,” said Ms. Baker Kline in a recent interview. The story opens with a horrendous traffic accident and then follows how that tragedy reverberates through people’s lives from four difference perspectives.

“It’s a darker, longer, more intensive exploration,” she said.

“The marketing people are already talking about changing the title, so it might be different,” she said. The new book is tentatively set to come out in May 2009.

So, with that one off to the publisher, is Ms. Baker Kline taking the summer off? Hardly.

Next on her literary agenda is a novel based on the “orphan trains” of the late 1800s and early 1900s. As many as 200,000 destitute children were swept off the streets of New York City and placed with new families, primarily in farming communities in the Midwest. Scholars believe 43 children were sent to towns in coastal Maine.

Grown orphan train passengers formed associations and even held regular reunions.

With her mother, father, and sisters, all of whom are writers, living within two miles of her summer residence, Ms. Baker Kline, spends plenty of time with family and admits she is in no rush to return to her winter home in Montclair, N.J. There are just too many fun things to do on MDI and it’s also a great place to write, she said.

“I love it here,” she said, as if betraying a confidence. “This summer has been great. I have a marvelous work schedule.”