Rilla of Ingleside
1921
The youngest daughter of Anne and Gilbert Blythe has always lived in the shadow of her brothers. Rilla is sixteen, concerned only with dances and debutantes, when the world changes forever. War comes to Ingleside, and suddenly the boys she grew up with, her brothers Jem, Walter, and Shirley, her beloved Ken Ford, are crossing an ocean to fight in a war that will reshape everything she knows. This is not the Montgomery of Green Gables' gentle nostalgia. Written in 1921 while the grief was still fresh, Rilla of Ingleside is the only Canadian novel about the First World War written by a contemporary woman, and one of the first to name Gallipoli and the ANZACs. It follows Rilla as she transforms from a sheltered, romance-obsessed girl into the woman who holds Ingleside together, who tends the home front, raises an orphaned baby, and waits for news that may never come. The war is not distant or heroic here. It is terrifying, ordinary, and real. For readers who thought they knew Montgomery, this is the book that will change their mind. For readers who loved Anne, it is the chance to see her daughter become someone just as remarkable.
