Hard-won Hope
Peter L.Edman
July 1, 1996
A live Coal in the Sea by Madeleine L'Engle (Farra, Straus and Giroux, 1996); 323 pages, $24.00 MADELEINE L'ENGLE OFFERS NO easy answers in her latest novel. Nor does she ask easy questions. But as her characters wrestle through the questions, A Live Coal in the Sea affirms hope. The story is about mothers and mistakes, fathers and identity, happiness and meaning—and about mercy. A Live Coal continues L'Engle's practice of returning to characters from her previous works and seeing where the years have taken them in the interval, who they have become, and what lessons they have learned through the process. Her characters walk in and out of her various novels, connecting a lifetime's body of work that has seen individual volumes marketed to adults, young adults, and children. This latest book has commonalities with A Severed Wasp (1982), which returned to the protagonist of L'Engle's first novel, The Small Rain (1945). A Live Coal again takes up the story of Dr. Camilla Dickinson, last seen as a teenager in L'Engle's fourth book, Camilla (1951). Now nearing retirement from her career as a noted astronomer, Camilla is widowed, with two grown children. Her granddaughter, Raffi, is attending the college where Camilla teaches. Camilla's son Taxi, Raffi's father, is a television star who has achieved success by any human standard—and is miserable. Suffering from a career and identity crisis, he unsettles Raffi enough to make her come to Camilla and ask: "Are you or aren't you my grandmother?" The search for truth that follows again illumines the promiscuous past of Camilla's own mother. The story is set in the present, though much of the action takes place earlier this century in memories and stories resurrected by Raffi's questions ...
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