A severed wasp

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. Madeleine L'Engle's many books include A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet , and Certain Women . She lives in New York City, where she is writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In November of 2004, L'Engle was awarded the prestigious National Humanities Medal. This novel offers a continuation of the story of Katherine Forrester Vigneras, the concert-pianist protagonist of L'Engle's novel The Small Rain . Here she returns to New York City in order to retire after living in Europe. 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. "I don't know another current American writer who could weave the worlds of music and the international concert stage, the claustrophobic life of a great cathedral close, and aspects of the often threatening street life of New York as Miss L'Engle does."� Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal "Hours of wonderful, suspenseful, provocative, soul-satisfying entertainment."� Norman Lear