The Polly O'Keefe Quartet (1965 - 1989) By Madeleine L'Engle

Earlier this year, I read a Library of America (LOA) collection of four Madeleine L’Engle novels known as The Wrinkle in Time Quartet.  The novels are science fiction, with a theology subplot.  All four featured the Murray family: married scientists with four children, a daughter named Meg, and her three younger brothers, all exceeding smart.  Meg is the narrator of the series.  At the end of the series, it is evident that Meg will marry Calvin O’Keefe, a character in the novels.

The LOA has now published a second collection of L’Engle novels, The Polly O’Keefe Quartet, which I finished earlier today.  Polly is the daughter of Meg & Calvin, a teenager, she is the oldest of the seven O’Keefe children.  This second series, while a continuation of the first, is very different.  The novels still can be classified as science fiction, and they emphasize even more so the theology, but my guess is L’Engle was testing her skills at other literary genres when she wrote these.  In this quartet, you can find international espionage, romance, environmental activism, and a significant teenage girl coming-of-age aspect that wasn’t really present in Wrinkle in Time.   Significantly, the closing novel, An Acceptable Time, returns to the time-travel plot presented in the first novel, A Wrinkle in Time.

The four novels are:  The Arm of the Starfish, 232 pages, published in 1965; Dragons in the Water, 252 pages, published in 1976; A House Like a Lotus, 242 pages, published in 1984; and An Acceptable Time, 242 pages, published in 1989.

Recommendation:  Yes, I’ve enjoyed reading these.  As with the first collection, it is important to read them in sequence.