The Blue Castle

Valancy Stirling is twenty-nine, unmarried and bullied by a clan of relatives, and a doctor's letter tells her she has a year to live — so she says what she thinks, moves out, and proposes to the most disreputable man in the county. Montgomery wrote one of her only two novels for adults in 1926 and set it in Ontario rather than the island. The diagnosis is not the twist; what Valancy does with it is. One hundred plates by painters including Childe Hassam and Robert Henri follow Valancy through the light and weather of her rebellion, from terrace to snow.