HOUSE OF DREAMS

The first middle-grade biography of Canadian author L.M. Montgomery in over 20 years.

Drawing primarily on the author’s personal journals (published only in edited form until very recently but available to the author in their entirety), Rosenberg presents a balanced and sympathetic portrait of a lonely young girl who grew up to write cheerful novels despite her always-challenging life. Maud (she was never called by her first name, Lucy) lost her mother to tuberculosis in 1876 before she was 2 and her father to wanderlust before she was 7. Raised by her puritanical grandparents in Cavendish, a small village on Prince Edward Island, she early on retreated into her imagination, naming the trees in her grandparents’ yard. Her first novel, Anne of Green Gables, was published to instant success—but Maud, by then 34, had broken off an engagement and was the sole caretaker of her elderly, difficult, and ailing grandmother. Prone herself to bouts of severe depression, she married a preacher who suffered from severe mental illness, and troubles with her elder son haunted her last years. Rosenberg writes clearly and honestly, making liberal use of Maud’s own words, allowing Maud’s courage and joy to shine despite her very real problems. Morstad’s black-and-white drawings effectively set the mood, underscoring the ethnic homogeneity of the largely white PEI.

A kind, thoughtful, nuanced portrayal of one of the icons of children’s literature.