rich residents in villas and poor people in tin shacks, supported (and heavily polluted) by the oil industry. The other major industry appears to be smuggling - of art, drugs and other commodities. Miss Leonis Phair stays at the Hotel de Lago there. One point of interest is the Plaza Bolivar. Heavily armed guards and police are a common sight. Both the port and the lake names refer to dragons in the waters, from the Biblical quotation "Thou didst divide the sea through thy power; thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters" (Psalms 74:13, KJV), quoted by Miss Leonis at the end of the book. Austin family series Thornhill, Connecticut – the village near which the Austins live in most of the books. The Austin home is akin to the Murry farmhouse and to Crosswicks in size, age and environs; for example, all three have a "star-watching rock" out back. The Austin house is outside Thornhill, at the end of a dirt road that intersects the "old Boston Post Road". The Austins have an old barn, in which Vicky's brother John works on building a mock-up of a space suit. Dr. Austin sees patients a few evenings a week in his office at one end of the house, which has its own entrance. A short drive from the Austin house is Hawk Mountain (apparently a fictionalized version of Mohawk Mountain near Cornwall, Connecticut), another place the family goes to talk and look at stars. The nearby town is Clovenford, where Dr. Austin works at the regional hospital. The state in which Thornhill is located is not initially given, but in The Moon by Night John Austin tells Zachary Gray that the family is from Connecticut. L'Engle and her family, the Franklins, lived in a similar Connecticut locale when Meet the Austins was written. In a 1995 introduction to the Austin family paperbacks, L'Engle states that "Indeed, the Austins do a great many things that my family did, including living in a small dairy farm village." L'Engle also mentions Clovenford in a fictional incident in A Circle of Quiet (p. 87). Seven Bay Island – a fictional island about two days' drive from Thornhill, home of Reverend Eaton, Vicky's maternal grandfather, and of Leo Rodney. The exact state is not given, but L'Engle describes is as be "an island off the New England coast". Appears in Meet the