An Acceptable Time
An Acceptable Time first edition
|
|
| Author | Madeleine L'Engle |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | (hardback) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Time Quintet, Polly O'Keefe |
| Genre | Young adult, Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus & Giroux |
|
Publication date
|
October 1, 1989 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 343 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 20191102 |
| [E] 20 | |
| LC Class | PZ7.L5385 Ac 1989 |
| Preceded by | Many Waters |
An Acceptable Time is a 1989 young adult science fiction novel by Madeleine L'Engle, the last of her books to feature Polyhymnia O'Keefe, better known as Poly (The Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Waters) or Polly (A House Like a Lotus, An Acceptable Time). Marketed as part of the author's Time Quintet (the other four volumes of which are called the Time Quartet), An Acceptable Time connects Polly's adventures with those of her parents, Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe, which take place a generation earlier. The book's title is taken from Psalm 69:13, "But as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord, at an acceptable time."
Happy to be away from her large family for a while, Polly O'Keefe is spending the autumn with her maternal grandparents, Dr. Kate Murry and Dr. Alex Murry, getting a better education from them in science than she would have received at home. She is grieving the loss of her beloved friend and mentor, Maximiliana Sebastiane Horne. Soon, however, surprising things start to happen, including the unexpected arrival of Zachary Gray, a charming but troubled college student whom Polly met in Greece and dated in Cyprus the year before (in A House Like a Lotus).
Then, while walking near her grandparents' Connecticut home, Polly meets druids Karralys and Anaral and a warrior named Tav, all of whom lived in the area some three thousand years ago. She soon learns that she is not the first person from her time to meet the Murrys' Pre-Columbian neighbors. Bishop Nason Colubra, the brother of a family friend, Dr. Louise Colubra, has been investigating the hieroglyphs found on rocks in nearby, relics of Karralys' time. In doing so, he has also come into repeated contact with Anaral's tribe, the People of the Wind (a tribe that previously appeared in A Swiftly Tilting Planet). The retired bishop is initially reluctant to discuss this, having been met with his sister's skepticism in previous attempts. However, he feels responsible for exposing Polly to the potential dangers of a tesseract of intersecting periods of time.
...
Wikipedia