"I saw eternity the other night / like a great ring of pure and endless light"

I had been thinking for a while about writing something about Owen Wilson and the feeling of nearly losing a creative voice that I love when I heard that Madeleine L'Engle had passed away. Her faith, which came through so strongly in her writing, gives me faith that her soul is somewhere that, if not better, is at least different from here. I couldn't help but shed a few tears though, to know that she has gone and taken her characters and worlds with her. The stories of Meg Murry, Polly O'Keefe and Vicky Austin have all been told, there will be no more.

Like most children, my introduction to L'Engle was through A Wrinkle in Time, which I must have read for the first time sometime in elementary school. I recall reading the Wrinkle quintet and enjoying them, but it wasn't until high school that I started to compulsively collect and read more of her adult books. As a reader, I could tell that she cared deeply about her characters and that their lives didn't stop with the books. My two favorite books of hers, A Severed Wasp and A Live Coal in the Sea, each pick up the story of one of her young heroines, decades after their first appearances. She created complex, intelligent women who were wives and mothers as well as Nobel laureates and world-renowned concert pianists. She raised issues of religion and faith without proselytizing. She wove her stories together, taking characters from one novel to the next and always making their appearance natural. I can't say enough about what her books have meant to me.

Rest in peace, Ms. L'Engle