The author of 'A Wrinkle in Time' was both vulnerable and regal—and a writer to her marrow

When I met her, she was already famous. Certainly, everyone in children’s books knew her story—early publishing success, then years of polite rejection slips for the quirky manuscript she felt she “had to write.” Twenty-six publishers had said no before John Farrar, one of the partners at Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG), was approached after church by a woman he knew, with the fateful words, “I have a friend with a manuscript.” Sometimes, against all odds, a miracle happens. This was one of those times: A Wrinkle in Time (1962) had found a home. In 1963, when Madeleine was 44 years old, her belief in her book was not only vindicated, it triumphed. A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery Medal and became an almost instant children’s classic. Fast forward to 1977, my second day as editor-in-chief of children’s books at FSG. Roger Straus strolled into my office, silver hair slicked back, white Tuxedo shirt open halfway down his tanned chest. “Hey baby [Roger called men and women baby], Madeleine’s in a big hurry to meet you. Take her to lunch or something.” He didn’t have to explain which Madeleine. I telephoned immediately and heard Madeleine’s vibrant voice for the first time. As a young woman, she’d worked in the theater, and she had retained a sense of the dramatic and a full, rich stage enunciation. We made a lunch date for the following week. In the meantime, she would send me some pages from the new book she had started. “It’s a sequel to Wrinkle and Wind,” she told me. Wind, of course, was A Wind in the Door (1973), the second book about the Murry family, and particularly about Meg Murry, the grouchy, stubborn, unattractive girl who was a new kind of contemporary heroine for children’s books, and Charles Wallace, her genius little brother, whom everyone except the family considered “slow.” Across the country, readers who felt equally out of step with their surroundings had claimed the Murrys as a reflection of their secret innermost selves. A few days later, the assistant editor came in bearing treasure from the morning mail—a slim manila envelope containing 50 or so pages. I shut my office door and settled down to savor the moment. And then, I read about ancient Wales and a warrior named Maddox, who had a fight with his brother Madoc and set sail in a small boat for unknown lands in the west. That was it. No mention of Meg, Charles Wallace, tesseracts, mitochondria, farondolae, or kything. I was puzzled, but hopeful. Madeleine’s adult books—including the autobiographical titles that eventually would be grouped together as the Crosswicks Journals—A Circle of Quiet (1971), The Summer of the Great-Grandmother (1974), The Irrational Season (1976), and Two-Part Invention (1988)—were edited by Robert Giroux. If Roger Straus was FSG’s worldly sophisticate presiding over editorial meetings, Bob Giroux was the white-haired, rosy-cheeked favorite uncle (if you happened to have an erudite uncle who had edited T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Isaac Bashevitz Singer, Elizabeth Bishop, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy). The Crosswicks books would bring Madeleine even more admirers, including some who had never read her books for young readers, and were part of the reason for her huge popularity as a speaker. Bob was not only Madeleine’s editor but also a friend of the family, and he filled me in on her husband, Hugh Franklin (an actor who played Dr. Tyler in the popular soap opera All My Children), and their three children, Josephine, Bion, and Mariah. Bob said Madeleine was a pleasure to work with and a writer “to her marrow.” If I ran into difficulties, he would try to help, but while he respected children’s books, he did not, he said firmly, understand them. On the appointed day, Madeleine came downtown to the legendarily funky FSG offices, at 19 Union Square West in New York City, so that Roger could formally introduce us. My first impression was that she was both regal and vulnerable. She was tall, 5 feet 10 inches, and full figured with long legs and a slightly awkward gait. By her own description, she had “hair-colored hair,” which she wore cropped short and combed forward in a modified Julius Caesar. No visible makeup. She had been described to me by my aunt, who had acted with Hugh many years earlier and had been to parties at the Franklins, as being wonderfully glamorous. But now in her late 50s, Madeleine had abandoned ordinary glamour—except for the kind that accrues by accomplishment and force of personality. If she was in a room, you would not overlook her. We had a getting-to-know-you lunch at the Dardenelles, at that time one of the few tablecloth restaurants in the area. I knew I was on trial, an unknown quantity to Madeleine, and at first, she interviewed me rather briskly. As lunch went on, she relaxed. She had a dry, ironic wit, and unlike some great talkers, she also was one of the world’s great listeners. Finally she leaned over the table and said in her thrilling voice, “I need you.” Was ever a young editor so flattered as I? Hal Vursell, now retired, had been the editor of Wrinkle. He had taken me to lunch my first week at FSG and told me that Madeleine needed an editor, and I must not be intimidated by her reputation. But it’s one thing for a fellow editor to think so, even a distinguished editor such as Hal, and another thing for the Queen of Children’s Books to say it. Emboldened, I thought of the puzzling Welshmen, and said, “About the pages you sent to me….” “Oh, that’s now backstory,” Madeleine said, drawing another manila envelope out of her bag. “I’ve completely rewritten. Here.” And she thrust another 100 pages at me. I’d been in children’s books for seven years and an editor for five. In that time, I’d never been invited to view so much of an author’s creative process. She was both confident and humble about her work, and very direct about her thirst for praise. My biggest challenge was being selective with my opinions during the early stages. An incautiously ventured remark could lead to a complete rewrite. Stephen Roxburgh, who followed me as Madeleine’s editor, commented that she had prodigious storytelling power—when one plotline didn’t seem to be working, she’d come up with three more. Because we both lived on the Upper West Side, we often worked at her desk in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine’s library, where for 30 years she acted as volunteer librarian. But several times during the course of each novel, I’d go up to Crosswicks, the rambling pre-Revolutionary War house she and Hugh owned in Goshen, CT. The house was the center, not only of the Crosswicks Journals but also of the Murry family novels. There she pointed out Meg’s attic bedroom, the kitchen table where the Murry family gathered in times of crisis, the twins’ vegetable garden, the star-watching rock, and even the pond where Maddox settled when he came from Wales. It was fascinating, but the picture of the star-watching rock I already had in my mind was not supplanted by the “reality” of the actual rock. Seeing these places, for me, was a little like peeking at her notes and source materials. It was through her imagination that she transformed them from mere fact into a story. A Ring of Endless Light (1980), the second book I edited, was a contemporary book about Madeleine’s other fictional family, the Austins. Most writers ultimately are writing about themselves, and Madeleine was the first to admit she “was” her two female main characters—insecure, geeky Meg Murry and the sensitive aspiring writer, Vicky Austin. The scars from Madeleine’s lonely childhood ran deep, but somewhere along the line she had figured out that while you can’t change what happened to you, you can decide how you want to think about it. And so the isolation that came from being the only child of busy parents who fed her in the kitchen with her nanny, while they dined formally at eight, was what she credited with sparking her imagination. The miserable time she spent in her English boarding school, she claimed, taught her the kind of discipline that made her able to write in airports, train terminals, and probably in the middle of a force-five hurricane. I’ve often thought there is a correlation to be made between being an author and being a mail-order bride. Usually with some effort and goodwill on both sides you can make the marriage work, coming together for a common goal. Occasionally, you get lucky, the chemistry is right, and a stronger bond is formed. After I left FSG in 1981, Madeleine and I didn’t see each other as often, but we remained friends, managing to find time in her busy schedule for occasional dinners and movies, to talk about books, and get caught up on each other’s lives. I loved working with Madeleine, but there were many others she needed, both before and after me, to play their roles in bringing her books to readers: John Farrar, Hal Vursell, Clare Costello, Bob Giroux, Carmen Gomez-Plata, Stephen Roxburgh, Luci Shaw, George Nicholson, Craig Virden, Beverly Horowitz, Margaret Ferguson, and Jean Feiwel. Many editors, but only one Madeleine. I’m proud to be among the people she needed. And I’m honored to have been her friend.

---

Sandra Jordan’s latest book for young people, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Through the Gates and Beyond, cowritten with Jan Greenberg, will be published next spring by Neal Porter Books/Roaring Brook Press.