Becoming Madeleine: A Biography of the Author of A Wrinkle in Time by Her Granddaughters

By Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy

This middle-grade biography explores the life and works of Madeleine L'Engle —written by her granddaughters.

This elegant and insightful biography of Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007) was written by her granddaughters, Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy. Using never-before-seen archival materials that include photographs, poems, letters, and journal entries from when Madeleine was a child until just after the publication of her classic, A Wrinkle in Time, her granddaughters weave together an in-depth and unique view of the famous writer. It is a story of overcoming obstacles—a lonely childhood, financial insecurity, and countless rejections of her writing—and eventual triumph. Becoming Madeleine will speak not only to fans of the icon’s work, but also to anyone interested in writing.

This title has Common Core connections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Feb 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780374307653

Book preview

Prologue

We were young when our grandmother, Madeleine L’Engle, started sharing with us the patchwork of events, relationships, and emotions that shaped her into the person she was always becoming. She described her childhood as solitary, and we thought it must have been lonely—after all, even we, who had each other, had periods of loneliness. But her stories about growing up and becoming the writer and grandmother we knew gave us the assurance that, just like her, we could survive the hurts and joys of childhood and adolescence.

She encouraged us to read whatever we wanted, and eventually what we wanted was to read her books. By the time we were nine and ten, we had read A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and various excerpts of A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which was about to be published. The stories felt like Gran because they were infused with her spirit and took place at her home in Connecticut. However, it wasn’t until we read And Both Were Young, a novel she had written about a girl at a Swiss boarding school, that we recognized a direct parallel to her life. We knew that she had also gone to a boarding school in Switzerland, and we wondered if everything that happened to Flip, the protagonist, had happened to her, too. So we asked.

Were the other girls mean to you?

Did you plant poppies hoping for wonderful dreams?

Were you really called by a number and not your name?

She patiently answered our questions and went on to tell us how she came to go to the school in the first place. She was only eleven, shy, awkward, and bookish. She and her parents had moved to rural France, and on a beautiful day in late September they had packed a picnic lunch and started driving. Madeleine had assumed they were going to spend the afternoon on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, but instead they passed a sign for the village of Montreux and pulled up to Châtelard, a boarding school for girls. It was grand on the outside, cold and spare on the inside. Her parents introduced her to the school’s matron and left her there, with hardly a word of goodbye.

Really, Gran? Our regal but sensitive grandmother abandoned at a foreign boarding school, her parents too cowardly to tell her what they were doing? We were outraged.

It wasn’t so bad after a while, she assured us. And I learned a lot. It helped me become a writer. She then went on to explain, I had always written stories, ever since I could hold a pencil. As a small child in New York City, I spent a good deal of time alone, and my stories kept me company. But at boarding school, I was never alone. They didn’t think that privacy was good for girls. So I learned to shut out the din of a crowded dormitory, and now I can concentrate and write anywhere.

We were still incredulous. But weren’t you angry with your parents? How did you ever forgive them?

Of course I was angry. And hurt, too. But I came to realize my parents had their own hurts and angers that had nothing to do with me. Before the war, before I was born, they lived a very adventurous and happy life. But then after the war came along and I was born, everything changed for them. Trying to make sense of all of this helped me become a writer. A writer must be able to understand different points of view.

Still, the story was grim. After the first couple of months at Châtelard, Madeleine was able to go home for Christmas vacation, but instead of a joyous reunion, with parents delighted to see their only child, she found her parents withdrawn and unhappy. Her father was ill and his typewriter sat unused. Her mother played Bach on the piano with fury. They were too wrapped up in their own worries and sadness to give her much attention.

How did you get over that?

I tried to understand them. I wrote stories, trying to imagine what it was like for them. I learned to inhabit other selves, other ages. It helped put things into perspective. And now that I am older, I still do that. I’ve never had to lose my younger selves—so that’s why I am every age I have ever been.

We’ve been wondering and marveling at her timelessness ever since.

We are now able to step back and look at how our grandmother became Madeleine L’Engle, starting from the beginning: What were her parents like when they had been happy, before World War I, before she was born? How did her hurts and joys manifest themselves in her writing? Here, with the aid of her fiction and nonfiction books—along with her journals, letters, and our own family stories and memories—we begin to answer the questions.

Charles Wadsworth Camp and Madeleine Mado Hall Barnett, circa 1908

Before Madeleine

Madeleine’s mother, Madeleine Mado Hall Barnett, grew up in Jacksonville, a city in northern Florida on the Atlantic Ocean. She was a classically trained concert pianist who had studied in Berlin.

Madeleine’s father, Charles Wadsworth Camp, was a novelist and journalist. He was born near and educated at Princeton University, up North in New Jersey.

In many ways they were opposites. Charles at twenty-eight was gregarious, confident, and handsome—over six feet tall, with thick fair hair. Mado was much more reserved. She had always felt herself to be an ugly duckling, and at twenty-six she was considered an old maid.

They met when Charles came to Jacksonville for his sister’s wedding. Mado was standoffish at first, unsure that his attentions were sincere. But they quickly fell in love and married in 1906, and Charles whisked her off to New York City.

Mado and Charles settled in a two-bedroom apartment on East Eighty-Second Street. Charles reviewed plays, wrote novels, and later was a foreign correspondent for magazines such as Collier’s and The Century. He traveled abroad frequently for his work, taking steamships across the ocean to places like London and Paris as well as Cairo and Shanghai, and was often accompanied by Mado. Charles’s work also meant that he and Mado rubbed elbows with both high society and a world of artists. Although they loved to entertain, they couldn’t afford to throw lavish dinner parties, so they instituted a tradition of simple Sunday-night suppers. Their friends would pile into their tiny apartment, a few of them would cook a meal, and Mado would play the piano while they all sang. Everyone had a glorious time. (Mado enjoyed playing for friends and at small gatherings, but she was terrified about playing in public.)

Mado, circa 1904

Then came the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Charles went to Europe twice for magazines—first to cover the war in France in 1914, and then to report on the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. He also wrote a nonfiction book about that experience called War’s Dark Frame, published in 1917, just before the United States entered the war.

Charles enlisted in the army as a second lieutenant and was sent to fight in France in 1918.

His war experience, as both a journalist and a soldier, had a deep impact on him that reverberated throughout his and his family’s life. When describing her father, Madeleine recalled that he was horrified and repelled by the destruction and devastation he had witnessed. Later, Madeleine said that the war had killed him; it just took him seventeen years to die. She, too, had a lifelong terror of

Reviews for Becoming Madeleine

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes you just have to surrender to a book and let it take over. This book, a rather slow starting one, nevertheless does get a person immersed in the politics of an outlying police department still struggling with an old unsolved mystery. Other reviewers have done a good job of describing the plot. I will just say that if you stick with this, you will come away with a much better understanding of Japanese culture...[in progress]

[yamamura_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

While I was reading this book, I had little time to devote to it as I was in play for our community theater, but even with that, I found myself easily being able to get back into it. Whenever I had a chance to read, I looked forward to see what was going to happen next.. I would have given it five stars but I found the ending not as smooth as the rest of book, though still engaging. I recommend it to anyone who love seeing footwork of a detective on a case.

[bostonbibliophile · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

More of a novel about crime than a crime novel per se, Six Four is a slow and thoughtful story about an old murder and a recent kidnapping, the consequences of the former and the fallout of the latter. Things get going late in the book; a lot of it reads like an extended interpersonal drama among office workers. I thought it was very well done but it is not a typical thriller at all.

[ritaer_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although Six-Four of the title refers to a kidnapping/murder of a young girl the main story is more about police department politics and corruption than about the solution of the crime. The protagonist is a former detective now in charge of media affairs. He is torn between loyalty to his current assignment, resentment that the detective devision distrusts media affairs and conflict between the police and the media. One gets the feeling that there are many nuances of Japanese character that the Western reader is missing.

[mcdenis-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a Japanese detective story with a complex plot and array of characters. Police Superintendent Mikami is assigned as Media Chief for Prefecture D. Several months prior his daughter goes missing. Within the Prefecture there is dissension between administration and the operating divisions. Moreover, the Press is a gangly lot, like fish at feeding time, wanting more information. Word comes that the big boss from Tokyo is to visit and review a past kidnapping (Case 6 4 )that was never solved. Sub-rosa it is a planned takeover of the Prefecture. Mikami’s loyalties are called into question. The novel is a spellbinder and assisted by a good translation. It gives a good glimpse of Japanese police culture. Lots of surprises as the plot comes to an end.I was given an electronic copy in return for an honest review.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Totally boring unless you are into Japanese police-press relations. The story is not bad but the handling is dumb beyond belief.

[cacky_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If you pick up this book thinking it is a crime novel, you will be surprised and perhaps disappointed. There is a crime at the beginning and it does get solved at the end. In between there is primarily political intrigue, police in-fighting, personal drama and much Japanese culture.The writing was very good with some translational hiccups.

[brumby18 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

interesting slant on the interaction between the police and the press in japan, I felt that the cultural ideosyncracies were too large for there to be a good understanding of the author's vision and intent. I might have missed something! plot fun and different;

[johnwbeha · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a strange book. It purports to be a thriller, but the thrills are few and far between, not because of the plot, which is quite interesting, but because the book is far too long. It needed a strong editor to ,omit the over writing and to enable the reader to retain interest in the characters and the story. There is a lot of detail about the workings of the Japanese Police Service, but it is hard to decide whether or not much of this background is accurate, because of, what seems to me, a great deal of exaggeration. I wanted to know how the story developed but I had long spells of irritation with the writing.

[smik_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The novel opens conventionally enough with police press director Yoshinobu Mikami identifying the corpse of a teenage girl, or rather, noting that the corpse is not that of his own missing daughter. From there the novel takes us back to a cold case - that of an 8 year old girl who went missing 14 years before and was found dead after a large ransom was paid. The Commissioner General from Tokyo is about to visit the family to pay his respects at the family shrine and Mikami is meant to be preparing the press for the visit.In reality much of the novel is taken up with an internal power struggle in Prefecture D between rival sections of the police force, Criminal Investigations and Administrative Affairs. As the head of Media Relations Mikami is part of Administrative Affairs although he was formerly a top detective in Criminal Investigations.The directors of these sectors are trying to undermine each other's reputations, each vying for promotion to the central police bureau in Tokyo, each regarding their current position as a demotion to a backwater. Mikami is the meat in the sandwich, constantly being threatened by one side or the other with being sent to an even more remote rural location, and never being a detective ever again. To make matters worse the Press Room has decided to put pressure on both sectors over the question of the use of anonymity in press releases and is demanding that the directors be more open in their disclosures. The police want the right not to disclose the identity of either a victim or a perpetrator. The press want the right to decide on the disclosure at the point of publication.There are several examples of police coverup of information that would either be damaging to police officials or to political figures. When the Chief Commissioner from Tokyo decides to make local PR visit, Mikami unearths one such damaging coverup when he is trying to set up a visit to the family shrine of a murder victim whose case is still unsolved after 14 years. For me the novel emphasised how very different the expectations of Japanese crime fiction readers must be. SIX FOUR is apparently a best selling novel in Japan (it sold a million copies in six days in Japan, according to its publisher) and I suspect many of the issues in the novel have their origins in contemporary Japanese social and political issues. However the result is heavy reading because there is at times detailed discussion and lengthy narration.Investigations into crimes seem to take a back seat, along with progress into understanding what has happened to Ayumi, Mikami's daughter who has been missing for three months. But then, just when you think the story must be wrapping up, the plot makes a twist, and it is this late plot development that makes all the persistence worth while. This twist cleverly draws all the previous plot lines together. The nature of of the story dramatically changes. And this is what other reviews have given the author accolades for.This is a novel that demands a lot of the reader, even more I suspect from the Western reader who does not have the same cultural understanding as a Japanese reader. I can't pretend that I understood everything but it certainly qualifies well as an entrant in the Global Reading Challenge.

[pierthinker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Glimpses into cultures not our own are far more discomforting than any science fiction or horror story can ever be. This thriller set in a provincial Japanese city gives us a detailed and rarely seen look at the workings of ordinary Japanese life and the ways in which that culture deals with everyday obstacles - office politics, attitudes to women, dealing with colleagues, both competent and stupid.Yoshinubi Mikami is a police detective reassigned to the police press office and charged with organising a visit from a senior officer from Tokyo on the anniversary of a child kidnapping that was never solved and the child never recovered. Weaving through the complex political machinations behind the visit and dealing with the fractious local press relationships leads Mikami to unravel the original crime.Pure police procedural with an added twist that the procedural rules and the personal and professional relationships that underpin those rules are largely unknown to a Western audience. This is a fascinating look into a different world using the familiar tropes of the crime novel.

[almin-70827 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a long, slow, hard read...not so much about a 14 year old kidnapping as the inner thoughts of the main character Mikami as he begins to examines his life and his reactions to it, a look inside the politics that rule the Japanese police department and the strained relationship between the police and the media. I'm glad I read it, but don't think I could recommend it without a warning that it is a extremely slow read

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Plods not thrills. What can you expect from a protagonist who's a police head of media relations. Then I read the author's bio and apparently he was a reporter so that would explain why he finds police-reporter relations at all interesting. I don't think anyone else does.

Characters are all ridiculous but that might just be cultural differences, maybe everyone in Japan is that neurotic.

[aug3zimm-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Not at all what I was anticipating. I thought this would be more of a direct mystery with the MC following leads to discover the kidnapper. Instead, it’s all about the office politics in the police department (the criminal investigation department vs the administrative department and the PR department vs the press) surrounding the kidnapping but also incorporating other things.

So yeah, drastically different than I anticipated, but I could not put it down. A good 75% of the book is our MC just thinking. Why was it so engrossing? No idea. But I was really engaged and enjoyed the whole ride. I wasn’t ready for it to end and was a little disappointed with HOW it ended, but really, the only thing I think I really would have been satisfied with is if it kept going.

My only complaint: so many characters! And a disproportionate number of them are “M” and “Mi-” names. Mikami, Mikumo, Mizuki, Minako... And having the two directors named Arakida and Akama tripped me up more than a couple of times. I needed a police org chart.

[lisa2013_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Highly recommended to all fans of Madeleine L'Engle's books, to young people who have specific goals, especially if they want to be writers or artists or have aspirations to succeed in a particular field or endeavor. This book is a gift to fans of her books. Children and teens who have passion for writing will be particularly interested in this biography. I also recommend this to readers who’ve had an important grandchildren-grandparent bond because that part of the story clearly comes through too. I inhaled this book in less than 2 days. It’s a book I wish I could own. I have loved this author since I was 9 years old and read Meet the Austins/Meet the Austins published two years earlier, and A Wrinkle in Time newly published that year. Those two books helped me get through my childhood and have never been off my top 10 list and that is saying a great deal. Despite being a huge fan of many of her books, and researching many people throughout my lifetime, for some reason I’d never made a point to learn much about her life. Readers can glean a lot about her early years without reading a biography. It’s obvious just from reading her books that she must have commonalities with Meg, with Vicky, with Camilla, with Flip, but this book gives details and they were so much fun to learn. She also wrote autobiographical works of her later years, but I’ve read just one or two. Now I’d like to read even more about her, but this book was extremely satisfying. The authors, her two granddaughters, deliberately chose to cover her life only up to the point of the publication of A Wrinkle in Time, and given that the book is written for middle grade readers, I think it was a sound decision, but now as an older adult I’d enjoy an account of her entire life, more than what she revealed in her writings.The photos and journal entries and letters, all the materials were wonderful to see. Marvelous for fans to have access to these things! I was impressed with what an accomplished person she was!I will say that some of the images of her early poems, letters, and journal entries were so tiny on the pages that I needed a magnifying glass to read some of their text. It was well worth the effort to do that.Bonus points from me: Not too far into this book I realized something about my own parents, similar to Madeleine’s in one way, and so I learned a bit about my life too. The book is well written and very well organized, and I appreciate that this account shows Madeleine as a well-rounded person, with many positive attributes and with flaws too, and shows happy and difficult events in her life. I appreciated the Epilogue and Author’s Note at the end of the book. Though some tragedies are mentioned along with her triumphs, I do think the book is suitable for middle grade kids and adolescents and adults can enjoy it too. I certainly did, maybe even more than I would have as a young person. I was completely engrossed while reading this. It was incredibly hard for me to write a review for this book because I knew I couldn’t do it justice. I’ve never been able to write proper reviews for any of this author’s books; as usual, it’s hardest for me to write reviews for books I’ve loved the most. And now I want to reread her books all over again and read ones I haven’t yet read. L’Engle was a prolific author. Since this is a biography these aren’t spoilers in the traditional sense but I think it would be most satisfying for readers to read this information in the book proper, so I’m putting the rest of the review in spoiler tags: I LOVE this quote (on page 79) from a journal entry she wrote while in college: “I made a discovery yesterday. I don’t suppose it’s an original sort of discovery at all, but at any rate, I found it for myself. When you write anything – a poem or a story – it’s yours only as long as only you know anything about it. As soon as anybody reads it, it becomes partly theirs, too. They put things into it that you never thought of, and they don’t see many things that you thought plain.” (If only every author understood this.)Wow! Now I know from where she gets the store from in the Meet the Austins book.It’s so funny re the recent AWIT movie which I’m unlikely to see despite a great choice of actress for Meg – I’ve been saying it should have been unknowns for the Mrs Whatsit & Co (and not Oprah, Reese, Mindy) because the book is about Meg, and Charles Wallace, and Calvin, not about the Mrss and too much attention is being paid to them in the movie trailers, so it was fascinating to see her working title for A Wrinkle in Time. I actually was going to add a lot more parts of the book that particularly struck me, but I’m hoping that readers will read the book for themselves.