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The Genesis Trilogy: And It Was Good, A Stone for a Pillow, Sold Into Egypt
Three classic titles now in one volume!
The Genesis Trilogy has long been awaited by fans of Madeleine L'Engle, who have expressed a desire to have all three of the authors books on Genesis in one volume. In addition to L'Engle's vast reader base, The Genesis Trilogy will be embraced by the literary community (which deeply respects L'Engle's award-winning work) and all those who seek to experience more fully the truths represented in Genesis. Book 1 of the trilogy, And It Was Good, speaks especially to those captivated by the creation story and those interested in new beginnings, while Book 2, A Stone for a Pillow, holds treasure for those seeking answers to the questions posed during their inner and outer journeys. Book 3, Sold into Egypt, provides hope to those who have experienced grief and loss.
The Genesis Trilogy has long been awaited by fans of Madeleine L'Engle, who have expressed a desire to have all three of the authors books on Genesis in one volume. In addition to L'Engle's vast reader base, The Genesis Trilogy will be embraced by the literary community (which deeply respects L'Engle's award-winning work) and all those who seek to experience more fully the truths represented in Genesis. Book 1 of the trilogy, And It Was Good, speaks especially to those captivated by the creation story and those interested in new beginnings, while Book 2, A Stone for a Pillow, holds treasure for those seeking answers to the questions posed during their inner and outer journeys. Book 3, Sold into Egypt, provides hope to those who have experienced grief and loss.
597 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2001
20 people are currently reading
776 people want to read
About the author
Madeleine L'Engle
169 books9,184 followersMadeleine L'Engle was an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 6, 2007
This book may have saved my faith. I read it during a terrible time when I needed to think of G-d in new ways.
November 21, 2012
Madeleine L'Engle's is an expansive and generous faith, not given overmuch to teasing out particulars of orthodoxy or preaching against heresies. It is a controversial faith for that, questioning orthodoxies and likely to tread on a few doctrinal toes. But it is a livable and energetic faith, unafraid of contradiction, unashamed in vigor. It is a faith that looks for the truth in other religions, without ever entertaining the idea that all Truth might be found outside the person of Jesus.
What you think of this book will depend largely on your feelings toward this faith. Many will find its lack of dogmatic backbone sentimental at best and syncretistic at worst. Others will latch onto this subtle and organic faith, energized by L'Engle's gentle yet hearty willingness to believe without empirical comprehension. I fall into both camps. It is easy to engage with this thinking, to be moved by the romance of a more liberal belief system. To be sure, L'Engle makes her case well. She shrewdly points out the excesses and banalities, the petty bickering of modern Christianity, and presents a vastly more appealing conception of the faith than most conservative brands of it. Still, I do believe there is a necessary place for orthodoxy, however divisive it may be. The constant need to doubt, to justify the possibility of being wrong, began to grate on me, even though I never once doubted L'Engle's sincerity or purity of intention.
It is a good book- the goodness and right intention of this book flow in and out of it's pages. The balm of Christianity soaks the pages, and no one could possibly deny the comfort it has brought. But the bracing is not there. The beauty of faith is that having it reshapes reality so that the objective truth is forever changed. In this book, we are given only the subjective. On both a philosophical level and a literary level, that's hard to swallow. If you are seasoned Christian, you will appreciate the honesty. Nonbelievers and new Christians will find this weak and limited.
What you think of this book will depend largely on your feelings toward this faith. Many will find its lack of dogmatic backbone sentimental at best and syncretistic at worst. Others will latch onto this subtle and organic faith, energized by L'Engle's gentle yet hearty willingness to believe without empirical comprehension. I fall into both camps. It is easy to engage with this thinking, to be moved by the romance of a more liberal belief system. To be sure, L'Engle makes her case well. She shrewdly points out the excesses and banalities, the petty bickering of modern Christianity, and presents a vastly more appealing conception of the faith than most conservative brands of it. Still, I do believe there is a necessary place for orthodoxy, however divisive it may be. The constant need to doubt, to justify the possibility of being wrong, began to grate on me, even though I never once doubted L'Engle's sincerity or purity of intention.
It is a good book- the goodness and right intention of this book flow in and out of it's pages. The balm of Christianity soaks the pages, and no one could possibly deny the comfort it has brought. But the bracing is not there. The beauty of faith is that having it reshapes reality so that the objective truth is forever changed. In this book, we are given only the subjective. On both a philosophical level and a literary level, that's hard to swallow. If you are seasoned Christian, you will appreciate the honesty. Nonbelievers and new Christians will find this weak and limited.
February 5, 2021
It has taken me a long time to read this because weighing in at close to 600 pages, reading a page or two per night doesn't move things along quickly; and it makes it easier to forget.
There are absolutely places that I disagree with L'Engle. Our fundamental theology is from different parts of the spectrum. Her reading of Genesis at times just doesn't match how I read the selections. That said, I do enjoy reading from her perspective sometimes exactly because of how she reads and interprets it. She is a storyteller and a poet and reads Genesis as a storyteller and a poet. And, boy, can she write.
Because this is three books in one, it might have behoved me to write a little review after each book, but, alas, I did not. I probably enjoyed the first book, And It Was Good, the most. I wanted some resolution to the story of the friend who made accusations that Madeleine told her story in the second book. Sold Into Egypt was my least favorite; I couldn't quite figure out the structure with the 12 brothers, most of whom we have little information about. I also found it the most redundant - Dinah, Joseph and Asenath's relationship, etc.
I always have a L'Engle going, but I'm not sad to have finished this one. Many great ideas, some confusing ones, ready to move on.
There are absolutely places that I disagree with L'Engle. Our fundamental theology is from different parts of the spectrum. Her reading of Genesis at times just doesn't match how I read the selections. That said, I do enjoy reading from her perspective sometimes exactly because of how she reads and interprets it. She is a storyteller and a poet and reads Genesis as a storyteller and a poet. And, boy, can she write.
Because this is three books in one, it might have behoved me to write a little review after each book, but, alas, I did not. I probably enjoyed the first book, And It Was Good, the most. I wanted some resolution to the story of the friend who made accusations that Madeleine told her story in the second book. Sold Into Egypt was my least favorite; I couldn't quite figure out the structure with the 12 brothers, most of whom we have little information about. I also found it the most redundant - Dinah, Joseph and Asenath's relationship, etc.
I always have a L'Engle going, but I'm not sad to have finished this one. Many great ideas, some confusing ones, ready to move on.
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August 13, 2022Deeply enjoyed the first two books. I struggled with the third
May 15, 2023
I was given this book by a friend of my childhood, someone I am grateful to have reconnected with. She is a woman of deep faith and is troubled by my apparent lack of need for religious faith in my life. I’m not offended by that, I welcome her concern as loving. She is not at all pushy.
So. I started this book (which is actually three books originally published separately) once and became immediately impatient, setting it aside with no intention to pick it up again. But I left it on my to-read pile because I hate to give up on something given to me. That some person thinks I will find something of worth or something entertaining makes me always want to read a gift if at all possible.
So recently—I must confess because my to-read pile was low—I picked it up again and this time slid into it easily. It helps that Madeleine L’Engle is a wonderful writer even when she is writing about faith so it wasn’t as though it was hard going.
Essentially she uses these three books to examine and speculate about the intriguing book of Genesis in the Bible, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. In the midst of that, she connects aspects about the various Genesis stories to her own faith and events in her life—somewhat like an abbreviated memoir, and also scatters short speculative fiction throughout, told from the point of view of characters—often women—whose thoughts and actions have been ignored in the verses handed down to us.
Generally two main observations made themselves felt as I read:
First, many of the points she makes—almost all of them—I totally agree with and try to live my life in accordance. I just don’t understand why a god needs to be devised in order to understand such guidelines and tenets and to try to live by them. It’s exceedingly easy to write almost every sentence in these books without ever bringing up god, although that would of course miss her point entirely.
Second, her theology is pretty slippery. When she gets into areas where straight-on interpretation leads her to a place she doesn’t want to be, she will say things such as she simply doesn’t agree with such interpretations or that the god she knows would not agree with those who say …. I’m not criticizing this—who am I to judge!?
But for me it highlights my own personal issues with religion/faith in general. She says the Virgin birth has never been a critical piece to her faith—mine either! I flat out don’t believe it. But for her, a quick rationalization allows her to leave it in the folds of her faith. For me, and maybe I’m the one being dogmatic here (!), if you don’t believe all of the Creed (or statement of faith or whatever your Christian church calls it), then how can you be Christian?
I really don’t want to go deeper, if only because I’m typing this on a phone—ugh. I will only say I came away thinking she was an absolutely lovely woman, a great writer, and a good Christian who had some smart things to say about Genesis. And that, aside from the central piece of her views—the reality of a Christian god, I agree with just about everything she says here.
Not sure I can exactly recommend it, but if you’re curious or if you feel like you need some lovely gentle persuasion toward faith, or just want to reaffirm your faith, this could be a good set of books to get into.
So. I started this book (which is actually three books originally published separately) once and became immediately impatient, setting it aside with no intention to pick it up again. But I left it on my to-read pile because I hate to give up on something given to me. That some person thinks I will find something of worth or something entertaining makes me always want to read a gift if at all possible.
So recently—I must confess because my to-read pile was low—I picked it up again and this time slid into it easily. It helps that Madeleine L’Engle is a wonderful writer even when she is writing about faith so it wasn’t as though it was hard going.
Essentially she uses these three books to examine and speculate about the intriguing book of Genesis in the Bible, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. In the midst of that, she connects aspects about the various Genesis stories to her own faith and events in her life—somewhat like an abbreviated memoir, and also scatters short speculative fiction throughout, told from the point of view of characters—often women—whose thoughts and actions have been ignored in the verses handed down to us.
Generally two main observations made themselves felt as I read:
First, many of the points she makes—almost all of them—I totally agree with and try to live my life in accordance. I just don’t understand why a god needs to be devised in order to understand such guidelines and tenets and to try to live by them. It’s exceedingly easy to write almost every sentence in these books without ever bringing up god, although that would of course miss her point entirely.
Second, her theology is pretty slippery. When she gets into areas where straight-on interpretation leads her to a place she doesn’t want to be, she will say things such as she simply doesn’t agree with such interpretations or that the god she knows would not agree with those who say …. I’m not criticizing this—who am I to judge!?
But for me it highlights my own personal issues with religion/faith in general. She says the Virgin birth has never been a critical piece to her faith—mine either! I flat out don’t believe it. But for her, a quick rationalization allows her to leave it in the folds of her faith. For me, and maybe I’m the one being dogmatic here (!), if you don’t believe all of the Creed (or statement of faith or whatever your Christian church calls it), then how can you be Christian?
I really don’t want to go deeper, if only because I’m typing this on a phone—ugh. I will only say I came away thinking she was an absolutely lovely woman, a great writer, and a good Christian who had some smart things to say about Genesis. And that, aside from the central piece of her views—the reality of a Christian god, I agree with just about everything she says here.
Not sure I can exactly recommend it, but if you’re curious or if you feel like you need some lovely gentle persuasion toward faith, or just want to reaffirm your faith, this could be a good set of books to get into.
June 24, 2018
I've learned more about the Bible here than from any sermon or any other book on theology. The stories come to life. I probably thought the Bible was boring before reading this without knowing I thought that way. I love its brute honesty about judgmentalism in Christianity and the church and how a lot of Christian art is bad. It centers on the family of Jacob and his sons and switches between there perspectives in really short stories peppered throughout the book. The author contemplates on her own life and is unafraid of being open.
If you are a fan of A Wrinkle In Time, I recommend. It's a shame this author is less mentioned than Chesterton or Lewis. Is it because she is a woman during the emerging feminist movements? She also is very honest about sexism in Biblical days and patriarchial attitudes of some Christians today we thought were bygone. This was written in the '80's so a lot of the world problems she mentions are still happening today.
If you are a fan of A Wrinkle In Time, I recommend. It's a shame this author is less mentioned than Chesterton or Lewis. Is it because she is a woman during the emerging feminist movements? She also is very honest about sexism in Biblical days and patriarchial attitudes of some Christians today we thought were bygone. This was written in the '80's so a lot of the world problems she mentions are still happening today.
April 12, 2020
I first read these three books, one after the other, at a major transition in my life, underlining and grabbing onto ideas and trying to hang onto my own faith. These writings are precious to me because of that time, and it was good to read them again.
And It Was Good - the early parts of Genesis, the Creation, Noah, Abraham
A Stone For a Pillow, my personal favorite - Isaac and Rebekah, but lingers most on Jacob and his travels and wrestlings
Sold Into Egypt - the Joseph story
Her midrashic storytelling in these three books is probably the best part. During my re-read I found much of these books still very heartening and useful, in spite of a world-weary tone here and there and a tendency to repeat herself. I still heartily recommend them and will always be grateful to her for her books.
And It Was Good - the early parts of Genesis, the Creation, Noah, Abraham
A Stone For a Pillow, my personal favorite - Isaac and Rebekah, but lingers most on Jacob and his travels and wrestlings
Sold Into Egypt - the Joseph story
Her midrashic storytelling in these three books is probably the best part. During my re-read I found much of these books still very heartening and useful, in spite of a world-weary tone here and there and a tendency to repeat herself. I still heartily recommend them and will always be grateful to her for her books.
June 15, 2022
Madeleine L’Engle walks us through important moments in Genesis, sharing her thoughts along the way. This Trilogy reminded me of why she was so amazing; she was not limited by others’ expectations of what she should believe or think. She had a unique freedom from theological boxes. Thinking outside of the established church’s comfort zone did not threaten her view of the Bible and its God- it greatly enlarged it. I found myself underlining great quotes on nearly every page. Must read!
April 14, 2023
Three books bound in one volume of the trilogy. Really liked the first two, AND IT WAS GOOD and A STONE FOR A PILLOW very much. Interesting and thoughtful explorations of the early stories of the Book of Genesis. The last one, SOLD INTO EGYPT, was written after the death of L'Engle's husband and it was clear that was foremost in her mind (as, of course, it would be), so the theological shift was more toward death than what I had imagined would be the focus.
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March 10, 2021L'Engle provides an idea I had not thought of before.
Lazarus died and went to heaven. Jesus brought him back to THIS life.
Bummer! Lazarus got to see heaven but then had to return here. And THAT'S why "Jesus wept."
(I think that's what the author said; that's what I understood her to say)
Good book. You should read it!
Lazarus died and went to heaven. Jesus brought him back to THIS life.
Bummer! Lazarus got to see heaven but then had to return here. And THAT'S why "Jesus wept."
(I think that's what the author said; that's what I understood her to say)
Good book. You should read it!
October 10, 2025
I really enjoyed these nearly 600 pages of Madeliene L'Engles ruminations. At times, I felt like I was just sitting with her, sharing a cup of tea, and simply chatting. Some of her thoughts were especially thought-provoking, and I so appreciated her emphasis on God as Creator, God as Good and God as Love. Well done.
May 26, 2019
Wonderful blending of scriptural accounts with modern-day life events.
June 13, 2020
A beautiful collection of nonfiction essays with interwoven stories from Genesis. L'Engle reflects deeply on her life and faith through these books.
March 10, 2017
Part memoire, part Biblical commentary, part midrash, as well as musings on cosmology and quantum physics: in this trilogy framed by the creation story, stories of the patriarchs, and the story of Joseph and his brothers, L'Engle asks many questions about faith, life, and our place in the universe, and along the way shares her own struggles and faith journey. Writing (1983-1989) before many of the events that shape our post-modern world, and sometimes therefore seeming a little dated, L'Engle here still provokes thought and even wonder at times.
November 29, 2012
This book is one of L'Engle's best non-fiction writings. It is a fusion of theological, devotional, and historical fiction. This is compilation of three of L'Engle's books that take their starting point from the book of Genesis. Reflection upon the creation story, the stories of Jacob and of Joseph bear the fruit of discussions about the goodness of creation, God's grace with sinful people, and God's purposes in our suffering. I really enjoyed the short stories of L'Engle's included within book one and book three. Her careful meditation upon Scripture led her to some insights that were new to me.
January 11, 2015
A little known classic of devotional literature from writer extraordinaire Madeleine L'Engle. Even though the book is almost 25 years old, so many of her reflections on the world ring true today. This format has three of her books in one volume, but all three naturally blend together as she reflects on the lives of the Genesis patriarchs. A lovely, often overlooked, devotional study.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews