Series Notes
The Arm of the Starfish is the first of four novels about Poly (later called Polly) and the O'Keefe family. The other three are Dragons in the Waters (1976), A House Like a Lotus (1984), and An Acceptable Time (1989). The Arm of the Starfish takes place about twelve to thirteen years after the events of A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the last of the Time Quartet of books about the Murry family. The Murry-O'Keefe books are said to take place in Kairos time, as opposed to Chronos or ordinary time. As such they cannot easily be pinned down as taking place in a particular year or even a particular decade. This is partly a problem of time continuity, arising from the fact that the books were written over a period of several decades. However, L'Engle's use of the term Kairos (which she describes inside the front cover of Many Waters as "real time, pure numbers with no measurement") suggests a religious connotation as well. The second generation O'Keefe books were written concurrently with the Time Quartet (eventually Time Quintet), with The Arm of the Starfish appearing just three years after A Wrinkle in Time. The final book in the O'Keefe series, An Acceptable Time, is also the final book of the Time Quintet.
The Murry-O'Keefe books have further connections with other L'Engle titles. The Austin family books have three major crossover characters in common with the O'Keefe books, two of whom are introduced in The Arm of the Starfish. Canon Tallis meets the Austins in The Young Unicorns, which takes place a few months after Starfish. Adam Eddington meets Vicky Austin the following summer in A Ring of Endless Light. The Austin family series is associated with Chronos instead of Kairos.
Read more about this topic: The Arm Of The Starfish
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