Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle

Sandy and Dennys have always been the normal, run-of-the-mill ones in the extraodinary Murry family. They garden, make an occasional A in school, and play baseball. Nothing especially interesting has happened to the twins until they accidentally interrupt their father's experiment.

Then the two boys are thrown across time and space. They find themselves alone in the desert, where, if they believe in unicorns, they can find unicorns, and whether they believe or not, mammoths and manticores will find them.

The twins are rescued by Japheth, a man from the nearby oasis, but before he can bring them to safety, Dennys gets lost. Each boy is quickly embroiled in the conflicts of this time and place, whose populations includes winged seraphim, a few stray mythic beasts, perilous and beautiful Nephilim, and small, long lived humans who consider Sandy and Dennys giants. The boys find they have more to do in the oasis than simply getting themselves home--they have to reunite an estranged father and son, but it won't be easy, especially when the son is named Noah and he's about to start building a boat in the desert.

This is technically the fourth book written in Madeleine L'Engle's Time series, but in the life of the Murry family, it takes places third, so that's when I always read it. Rather than really exploring much of a scientific angle as Wrinkle and Wind do, the actual space-time travel element just kind of happens, and the majority of the book is focused on Sandy and Dennys's experience where they travel. As usual with L'Engle's books, I think the premise of this one is fascinating: Sandy and Dennys are taken to Noah's family before the flood and discover that although Noah's sons are in the biblical story, Noah also has daughters, one of whom because very special to both of them. Beyond the premise, though, I don't actually love this story. Sandy and Dennys are not only very vanilla, they also describe themselves that way, in a very stilted manner, continually referring to themselves as just being the normal ones in their family. The book stirs up some interesting questions, but it all just seems to be an elaborate setup to examine those questions, and even the minimal dramatic tension in the story (will the twins make it out before the flood? What about Yalith?) is wrapped up in fairly anticlimactic ways.