The Arm of the Starfish Author:Madeleine L'Engle Young Adam Eddington, a brilliant student specializing in marine biology, secures a summer job as assistant to the world-famous Dr. O'Keefe, whose laboratory is situated on Gaea, a small island off the coast of Portugal. Before the plane takes off from Kennedy International Airport Adam makes the acquaintance of Carolyn Cutter, an attractive gir... more »l whose father has business interests in Portugal. Carolyn is going to Lisbon, too, but on another airline.
Carolyn warns Adam in a hurried and unclear manner against a certain Canon Tallis who, along with a 12-year-old red-headed child, is to be a passenger on Adam's flight.
Adam, more interested in Carolyn's good looks than in her incomprehensible warnings, pays little attention to them until suddenly in Madrid (to which his plane has been deflected by weather conditions) ominous events begin to occur. Carolyn's warnings take on more and more reality, and Adam finds himself the confused and unwilling center of a malign power struggle between two groups of people, only one of which can have right on its side. Whom is Adam to believe? Canon Tallis or Carolyn? Dr. O'Keefe or Carolyn's father? Joshua Archer or Dr. Ball? And what really lay behind the disappearance of the red-headed child, Poly O'Keefe, during the flight from Madrid to Lisbon?
These are the problems which Adam has to face in a modern, tense, well-plotted novel of suspense which, while having much to say about basic values and human loyalties, moves to an extraordinary and satisfying climax.« less