Although she is best known for her fantasy novels for children, particularly A Wrinkle in Time and Endless Light, Madeleine L'Engle is the author of some thirty-seven books, including novels, plays, poetry, collection of essays, and memoirs. Book World this month features Certain Women, L'Engle's latest excursion into adult fiction.
L'Engle juxtaposes the lives of two men, the biblical King David and the fictional modern actor David Wheaton. Their lives share many parallels--numerous marriages, children, dazzling success, and tragedies. The novel focuses on the mothers and wives and daughters and friends who love these inscrutable men, especially Wheaton's daughter Emma. Certain Women explores the particular way women answer life's difficult questions, how they endure and heal life's wounds.
In the excerpt, cancer-stricken David Wheaton has chosen to spend his last days aboard his yacht attended by his ninth wife, Alice, and his daughter Emma. Family members and friends have been summoned, and Wheaton begins to recount his life, revealing the depth of his obsession with his biblical counterpart. As her father seeks reconciliation with the demons of his past, Emma begins to grapple with her own life traumas, eventually finding healing, which will allow her possibility of reconciliation with her estranged husband.
Following the excerpt, commentator Gregory Wolfe examines Certain Women as a novel about the struggle in the human heart between hope and despair, "an intriguing effort...to explore the continuing relevance of biblical narrative." Literary scholar Alexandra Johnson profiles L'Engle's career, her views of creativity, and how that
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