The Moon by Night

The Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle, 1963 Farrar, Straus & Giroux

     For a summer between their lives in Thornhill and a stint in New York City the Austin family adventures across the United States. They are to visit Dr. Austin's brother and his new family, Maggy Hamilton (an orphan who has been living with the Austins) and her legal guardian Elena, Mr. Austin's new wife.
     Leaving Connecticut the family camps at campgrounds and alongside the road heading ever westward. In Tennessee they meet a teenage gang, in Texas they rescue children from a flood, in Utah they discover an abandoned baby. The journey is an adventure through contemporary society with traces of the Cold War, and anti-US sentiment at a campground in Canada.
     The fourteen-year-old Vicky Austin meets Zachary Gray at a campground in Tennessee and the young man fascinates her. The Gray family has everything they could want in material possessions: their luxurious camp trailer is pulled by a top-model hearse-like station wagon. But the Grays seem to lack what the Austins take for granted--their loving relationship.
     Despite his charm, or maybe because of it, Zachary is confident in his pursuit of Vicky throughout the country. The rest of the family doesn't like him, but the elder Austin daughter is growing up and searching for her independence so encourages his attention. When another young man, more appropriate in her family's eyes, takes an interest Zachary becomes jealous.
     Trouble seems to follow Zachary Gray and Vicky cannot save him from himself. She struggles with developing her sense of self and the summer of her "difficult year" pushes Vicky toward a more adult take on life. The second Austin Family novel is meant for middling readers--late elementary school through early high school--and can remind readers of the struggles that come with growing older.