At the beginning of the year, I decided to immerse myself in the life and works of a single author. And what better author to choose than perhaps my favorite author, Madeline L’Engle? I found the perfect place to start with, this biography written by her granddaughters, Voiklis and Roy.

I so enjoyed the many photographs, poems, letters, journal entries they had access to and shared with L’Engle’s readers. Although L’Engle had a lonely childhood, constantly faced financial insecurity and received a great many rejections of her books and plays, she always knew she was meant to be a writer. To me, she was an inspiring writer whose intelligence and compassion shone through her books, and reading this book, I was able to appreciate her as the elegant, creative woman she was to her granddaughters. In the introduction, they stated that they “wanted to write about her in a way that would bring her to life, for her readers,” and that is exactly what they did.

Some of the most interesting parts were about L’Engle as a young woman, who first attended boarding school, then went on to a girls’ college. L’Engle’s relationship with her mother was also an interesting facet of the biography. The biography ends with the publication of A Wrinkle in Time. The granddaughters explained that after all, L’Engle wrote her own autobiography, Circle of Quiet (which I believe I read years ago, but I plan to read it again). The authors have managed to create a true picture of a very real person in Madeline.

I would assign it a 5 out of 5 on a “readability scale.”