Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings.

French teacher with the Vancouver School Board. B.A. in English Literature and Women's Studies, moderator of a book club.

Mary Henley Rubio takes the reader on a fascinating journey through turn-of-the-century Atlantic Canada as she painstakingly details the life of perhaps Canada’s most well-known author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, the creator of Anne of Green Gables. This 684-page tome begins before Maud’s (as she herself preferred to be called) birth in 1874 until her death in the spring of 1942.

This biography is based on Montgomery’s own diaries and journals, which were meticulously documented, edited, and recopied by Montgomery herself. In anticipation of her success, she authorized their publication after her death. These missives are filled with the raw emotions that come with, in effect, being an orphan (her mother died when Maud was a child, and her father played little part in her upbringing), and having to live off the charity of other family members. Another prominent theme is the reality of being a woman trying to make it as an author during a time when women were expected to marry and bear children as their “career.” If a woman did decide to work, the only real choice was to teach school, typically under difficult conditions and at half the wage of their male colleagues.

The story of Maud’s huge success as the author and creator of one of the most beloved young heroines of all time is bittersweet when interspersed with the horrific legal woes caused by her greedy American publisher and an unscrupulous neighbour, as well as the gripping episodes of mental illness that affected both her and her husband and children. In a time when appearances were everything and gossip was a community’s greatest weapon, Montgomery’s life was a continuous pattern of breathtaking highs and tragic lows.

This being said, the book tends to jump around quite a bit. It is ordered chronologically but then will backtrack to specific major events in Maud’s life. This can create some confusion on the part of the reader. The book tends to repeat anecdotes several times throughout, again creating some confusion. Through no fault of the biographer, the biggest obstacle as well as the most intriguing one, is the fact that Montgomery edited her personal journals with the intent of readying them for publication. This leaves one to wonder about the many potential versions of events described in the book as well as musing about what details could be absent.