Summary

“White in the Moon the Long Road Lies” follows the chronological execution of L’Engle’s work, told in the past tense by a third-person narrator focused through Selina Williams, a girl on the brink of womanhood in a small town in Southern Georgia. Selina is moving to the north—L’Engle does not specify where—to become a schoolteacher. A party is thrown for her near-departure; she attends with her brother Bill, complaining on the way home about the townspeople. “‘It’s stagnant and old and narrow-minded here,’” she says, but admits that saying goodbye will nevertheless be hard for her (56).

Peter, her implied lover, did not attend her goodbye party, but meets her later that evening on a beach. He says he did...