The youngest Blythe child has always been sheltered and a bit frivolous, more interested in dances and bonnets than the rumblings of war in Europe. Then the summer of 1914 changes everything. As Glen St. Mary sends its young men off to the trenches, Rilla Blythe watches her world transform: her brothers enlist, her father ages, and the peaceful island life she knew becomes a country haunted by waiting and loss. What begins as a story about a girl learning to put away childish things becomes something far more profound: a quiet, devastating portrait of how war reaches into the most protected corners of life and demands sacrifice from those left behind. Rilla discovers reserves of courage she never knew she possessed, but the cost of that discovery is the end of everything she thought she knew about the world. Montgomery writes with piercing tenderness about the home front, capturing not battles but the smaller terrors: the telegrams that stop hearts, the gold star in the window, the waiting that never ends. It is a book about growing up in the worst possible circumstances, and the particular grief of losing your innocence when you didn't even know you had it.
