A Severed Wasp »

Best known as the writer of YA classics like A Wrinkle in Time, the prolific and eclectic Madeleine L'Engle penned adult fiction, poems, plays, memoirs, and religious meditations -- all infused with her trademark eloquence, imagination, and intellectual curiosity.

Katherine Forrester Vigneras, in a continuation of her story from The Small Rain, returns to New York City from Europe to retire. Now in her seventies, she encounters an old friend from her Greenwich Village days who, it turns out, is the former Bishop of New York. He asks Katherine to give a benefit concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This leads to new demands on her resources—human, artistic, psychological, and spiritual—that are entirely unexpected.