Many Waters

Front Cover
Macmillan, 1986 - Juvenile Fiction - 310 pages

Sandy and Dennys have always been the normal, run-of-the-mill ones in the extraodinary Murry family. They garden, make an occasional A in school, and play baseball. Nothing especially interesting has happened to the twins until they accidentally interrupt their father's experiment.

Then the two boys are thrown across time and space. They find themselves alone in the desert, where, if they believe in unicorns, they can find unicorns, and whether they believe or not, mammoths and manticores will find them.

The twins are rescued by Japheth, a man from the nearby oasis, but before he can bring them to safety, Dennys gets lost. Each boy is quickly embroiled in the conflicts of this time and place, whose populations includes winged seraphim, a few stray mythic beasts, perilous and beautiful nephilim, and small, long lived humans who consider Sandy and Dennys giants. The boys find they have more to do in the oasis than simply getting themselves home--they have to reunite an estranged father and son, but it won't be easy, especially when the son is named Noah and he's about to start building a boat in the desert.

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About the author (1986)

Author Madeleine L'Engle was born in New York City on November 29, 1918. She graduated from Smith College. She is best known for A Wrinkle in Time (1962), which won the 1963 Newbery Medal for best American children's book. While many of her novels blend science fiction and fantasy, she has also written a series of autobiographical books, including Two Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage, which deals with the illness and death of her husband, soap opera actor Hugh Franklin. In 2004, she received a National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush. She died on September 6, 2007 of natural causes. Since 1976, Wheaton College in Illinois has maintained a special collection of L'Engle's papers, and a variety of other materials, dating back to 1919.