An Acceptable Time
LC Class PZ7.L5385 Ac 1989 | | |
Preceded by | Many Waters |
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An Acceptable Time is a 1989 young adult
Plot summary
Happy to be away from her large family for a while,
the year before (in A House Like a Lotus).Then, while walking near her grandparents'
The Murrys and the Colubras try to protect Polly from being drawn into the past, but although she tries to obey their restrictions on her movements, she continues to encounter Anaral and the others. Karralys and Tav formerly lived in ancient Britain, but have since crossed the ocean and made their home with the People of the Wind. On Samhain, Polly feels a compulsion to visit the Murrys' indoor swimming pool, the modern location of a site considered sacred by Karralys, Anaral, and their tribe. Polly is suddenly transported to the past, where she learns that Tav wants to offer Polly in blood sacrifice in order to avert a drought. Already the People Across the Lake are conducting raids due to the privations of drought, and Tav wants to protect his adopted people. Karralys sends Polly home.
Zachary, however, is intrigued when he learns that the odd people he has seen are from the ancient past. His heart, previously seen as damaged by rheumatic fever in the Austin family novel The Moon by Night, is now so weak that he does not expect to live much longer. On the slight possibility that the solution to his problem lies with the ancient druids, Zach rashly leads Polly back to the star-watching rock, a place where Polly found herself in the past once before. Polly and Zach are drawn through a time gate and trapped in ancient Connecticut, with neither the Murrys nor Louise Colubra there to help Polly out of a potentially fatal situation. Tav soon changes his mind about whether his goddess wants Polly to be sacrificed. Her primary danger is not from the People of the Wind, but from their neighbors across the lake, where the drought is more severe.
The People Across the Lake conduct another raid, and leave behind two of their injured members as they withdraw. One of them, Klep, is expected to be his tribe's future leader. He develops an attachment to his healer, Anaral, and learns from Polly the concept of love. The other injured man, Brown Earth, persuades Zachary to cross the lake with him during the night. Tynak, the current leader of the People Across the Lake, promises to let the tribe's medicine man heal Zachary's heart if he helps bring Polly to them. Zach agrees. He participates in another raid, with Polly's capture as the goal. Polly tries to convince Zach that the People Across the Lake intend to sacrifice her for her blood, but he refuses to admit this. Polly escapes, but returns for Zachary's sake. Ultimately, Polly's spirit of self-sacrifice and love, accompanied by the timely return of rain on her captors' side of the lake, wins out as a better way to interact with the Divine than an offering of death. The two tribes agree to unite and help each other. Zachary repents his betrayal of Polly, and his heart is physically healed (at least in part) before they return to their own time. When they return Polly decides that she and Zachary shouldn't see each other any more.
Major characters
- Dr. Alexander Murry — an astrophysicist in the employ of the Federal government of the United States in earlier books, he appears to be semi-retired (or at least self-employed) in An Acceptable Time. His theories about the tesseract and "tessering", first seen in A Wrinkle in Time, continue to be his life's work. He suffers from arthritis and sometimes rides a tractor on the family's farm land. He is Polly's grandfather.
- Dr. Katherine"Kate" Murry — a microbiologist and Nobel laureate, Polly's grandmother works from the lab located at her rural home. Although she has an electron microscope, her work in recent years consists primarily of thought experiments.
- muses. Tall, thin and red-haired like her father, Polly has only recently become attractive to adolescent boys. She speaks a number of languages, and her facility for learning them enables her to learn Ogamwell enough to communicate with the ancient tribes.
- Dr. Louise Colubra — The Murry family doctor and a close friend of the family, she lost her husband many years ago and never remarried. Louise the Larger, a telepathic snake, was named for her. She consulted with Dr. Kate Murry about Charles Wallace's "mitochondritis" in A Wind in the Door, but is generally averse to fantastical explanations for events around her. Sister of retired Bishop Nason Colubra.
- Bishop Nason Colubra — Louise's brother, a retired bishop and amateur archaeologist, he studies Ogam artifacts and is the first character to encounter the time-traveling druids of the People of the Wind, sometime prior to the start of the novel. He is the third of L'Engle's characters to be based on a real person, in this case David Somerville, the retired archbishop of Vancouver.[2]
- Zachary Gray— An on-again, off-again student, Zach is interning in a law office at the beginning of An Acceptable Time. His boss there is interested in Ogam writing and Zach learns enough of this language to communicate somewhat with the People of the Wind and the People Across the Lake. Zachary grew up with an abundance of money and freedom but little love or stability, and vacillates between his desires for redemption and self-destruction. As of An Acceptable Time, his desire for self-preservation in the face of serious heart disease overrides all other considerations. Charming, exciting, unpredictable and emotionally needy, Zach brings out the best in Polly, but she cannot save him from himself.
Series notes
Polly's grandparents, Kate and Alex Murry, were first introduced in
Crossover characters
An Acceptable Time is the continuation and culmination of both the Time Quintet and the O'Keefe series (The Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Waters and A House Like a Lotus), with references to many places and events from previous books. Alex Murry's interest in the
As for Polly's own past adventures, she refers repeatedly to Gaea, her home in The Arm of the Starfish, and mentions the Quiztano people from Dragons in the Waters. An Acceptable Time takes place about six months after Polly's trip to Greece and Cyprus in A House Like a Lotus. In the interim, her friend Max has died and Polly is still grieving. It is implied that one of the reasons she has left fictional Benne Seed Island to study with her grandparents is that Max's death has left her with painful memories of her island home.[1]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-8057-8222-2.
- ISBN 1-880913-31-3.