An Acceptable Time (1989)

Out of town again - I’ll post the News Satire Roundup after I get back.

I didn’t read this book when I initially revisited Madeleine L’Engle’s time series, even though it was included in the boxed set I picked up.  Growing up, while I was aware of An Acceptable Time’s existence, my association with the time series only included the first four books.  Now, though, I’ve circled back around to it.

Polly O’Keefe, the daughter of the grown-up Meg and Calvin, is taking some time out to stay with her Grandma and Grandpa Murry.  What at first seems a cozy stay of study, relaxation, and nature quickly becomes more:  boundaries in time are blurring, and Polly finds herself increasingly encountering things and people that stood on that spot 3,000 years ago.  Members of the People of the Wind (a native tribe later displaced by European settlement,) along with two Celtic druids who’ve joined their community, are crossing over into Polly’s time.  The lines of history and the present are tangling, and Polly and her friend Zach are getting caught in it.

As with Many Waters, this book takes an immediate hit by not being about Meg, Charles Wallace, and/or Calvin.  I like Polly well enough, and I enjoy her story and interactions with the characters from the past, but there’s no one in this book that matches the richness of those three from the earlier books.  As such, while I like a lot of the proceedings, this story was never going to rival the likes of A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, or ASwiftly Tilting Planet.

That said, there is a lot to like here.  I enjoy revisting the People of the Wind, whose tribe we were introduced to in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and the druids, Karralys and Tav, bring to mind Madoc and Gwydyr from that book while still having a distinct dynamic of their own.  This book also brings back Dr. Louise from A Wind in the Door and introduces her brother, a bishop who, like Polly, is caught up in the blurred edges of the timelines.

Some interesting ideas here – I don’t know that they all necessarily fit together into a cohesive whole, but there are some neat threads woven into the overall patchwork.  I like the ruminations on the notion of gods/the earth demanding blood and whether the death of Christ does or does not align with that, as well as the question of whether there’s a point in praying to Christ 1,000 years before His birth.  As with most stories involving the intersections of time, we examine the pull between interference and predestination – will our characters’ involvement change the course of history, or are they simply playing their roles in what was always meant to happen?

Warnings

Violence, some racial insensitivity, and strong thematic elements.