Emily Climbs

Emily Byrd Starr has words inside her like fire. She has always had them, has built her whole world around them. But when the opportunity finally comes to leave New Moon and attend high school, her rigid relatives impose a cruel bargain: she may go to Shrewsbury, but she must not write a single word during her entire education. For a girl who has lived by stories, this is a kind of death. Still, Emily goes. She endures her disagreeable Aunt Ruth, navigates the treacherous social currents of adolescence, and finds her only true solace in friendships that feel like salvation. But the silence grows heavier, and Montgomery renders the interiority of a creative spirit in chains with piercing accuracy. This is a novel about what it costs to suppress part of yourself, and whether you can survive it whole. For readers who fell in love with Anne Shirley, Emily offers a different kind of heroine: flintier, more ambitious, with a darker core. But her passion and wit shine just as brightly. Decades later, this book still speaks to anyone who has been told their voice doesn't matter.