A Deceptive Devotion by Iona Wishaw - 20BOS26-12

It’s been six years since I visited Lane Winslow and her neighbors in King’s Cove, British Columbia, where she settled after WWII, hoping to find a peaceful place to rebuild her life. She has been partially successful: she is living in a shining white, old-fashioned house nestled on a dappled, sunlit green lawn, which she is extremely fond of; moreover, she has made numerous new friends and, in the previous book, became engaged to Frederick Darling, a former bomber pilot, who served in the RAF, now a police inspector in his native Canada.

Emily Climbs by L. M. Montgomery, for the #1925Club

When I was about 13, my family went to Martha’s Vineyard to spend part of a weekend with my father’s law partner. His children were younger so I begged to be taken to the local library (What, you say, you needed an excuse?). And what do you think I found on a discard table near the Chilmark Library door but a three-book series I’d never heard of by the author of Anne of Green Gables - also set on Prince Edward Island but about a different orphan. They were first edition hardcovers; unfortunately falling apart, but I have cherished them anyway. All three are delightful page-turners.

Mine for Keeps by Jean Little #1962Club

Title: Mine for Keeps
Author: Jean Little (1932-2020)
Publication: Little, Brown & Co., hardcover, 1962
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Setting: 20th century Ontario

This week, Simon from Stuck in a Book and Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings are hosting the 1962 Club, where bloggers read and write about books published in a chosen year.

Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune

Title: Meet Me at the Lake
Author: Carley Fortune
Publication: Penguin Random House audiobook / Berkley, hardcover, 2023
Narrator: A.J. Bridel
Genre: Fiction/Romance
Setting: Ontario, Canada

Description: Fern Brookbanks loves the Muskoka resort she grew up in but she also enjoys Toronto, where she went to college, and the big city experience. Just before graduation, when she is reluctant to tell her mother she doesn’t want to return home to help manage the resort, she meets an artist her age, Will Baxter.

Canada 2023 - part 2

We left Niagara-on-the-Lake Sunday morning to visit nearby Niagara Falls, which Andrea and Katherine had never seen. Our friendly waiter the previous evening had suggested we park by the Electric Commission to avoid traffic.  We should have got more precise

instructions as we wound up going through the very commercial town and then had to retrace our steps on foot. But when we saw the Beaux-Arts style Electrical Development Co. building (which operated from 1906 until it was replaced by a newer power station in 1974), we knew it was the right place and snagged a parking place.

O Canada 2023

The Shaw Festival is a theater festival located in Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL), Ontario, Canada, and is the second-largest repertory theatre company* in North America. It was founded in 1962 and Queen Elizabeth came in 1973 in honor of its first theater opening at the current location, staying at the charming Prince of Wales Hotel on the corner of King and Queen Streets.

The Prince of Wales Hotel, yards from our temporary home

The Grace of Wild Things by Heather Fawcett

Title: The Grace of Wild Things
Author: Heather Fawcett
Publication: Balzer + Bray/Harper Collins, hardcover, 2023
Genre: Juvenile Historical/Fantasy
Setting: Prince Edward Island

Description: Grace is a lonely orphan whose only talent is magic. Miserable at an orphanage, she runs away to the notorious witch in the woods and offers herself as an apprentice.

Susannah of the Mounties by Muriel Dennison - for the 1936 Club

Title: Susannah of the Mounties
Author: Muriel Denison (1886–1954)
Foreword: Susan Tweedsmuir
Publication: Puffin paperback (originally published in 1936)
Genre: Juvenile historical fiction
Setting: 1890s Saskatchewan, Canada

The 1936 Club is hosted by Simon from Stuck in a Book and Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings.

Description: When Susannah’s artist father gets a big commission in India, her parents put her on a train in Montreal with a newly hired nanny to her uncle in Regina.

The English Wife by Adrienne Chinn – historical fiction that begins in WWII England and leads to isolated Newfoundland

Title: The English Wife
Author: Adrienne Chinn
Publication: One More Chapter, trade paperback, 2020
Genre: Dual-timeline fiction
Setting: England and Newfoundland

Description: This is a story of two sisters living in Norwich during World War II and their descendants.  Ellie has always planned to marry her childhood friend George until she meets an outgoing Canadian soldier from Newfoundland.  Her sister Dottie disapproves because she doesn’t want Ellie to move away and her father disapproves because George is not Catholic, but Tom persuades her to tie the knot before he gets sent overseas.   

WWW Wednesday: October 28, 2020

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

A Perfect Gentle Knight by Kit Pearson - and the danger of too much imagination

Title: A Perfect Gentle Knight
Author: Kit Pearson
Publication: Penguin Canada, hardcover, 2007
Genre: Children’s Fiction
Setting: 1950s Vancouver
Audience: Middle Grade verging on Young Adult

Description: The six Bell children have relied on each other and their passion for the Knights of the Round Table to cope with losing their mother three years ago.  Their father, who was in the car accident too, is also grieving but he stays in his study and only emerges on Sundays to take the children to church and out to dinner.   The rest of the week they attend school but otherwise run wild; Sebastian, the eldest at 14, leads his siblings in knightly games every afternoon and even the 6-year-old twins are pages, enthusiastically practicing their swordsmanship.  But Sebastian is being bullied at school, Roz decides she wants to be a normal junior high student, and the three youngest children are becoming rude and grubby.   Cordelia (Corrie), the narrator, begins to worry that the game is getting out of hand and is unnerved when Sebastian tells her he is the reincarnation of Sir Lancelot.  She holds the family together as long as she can,  terrified of precipitating a disaster by confiding in an adult until it is almost too late.

Further Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - #1920Club

Title: Further Chronicles of Avonlea
Author:  L.M. Montgomery

Publication: McClelland & Stewart, Hardcover, 1920

Genre: Children’s fiction

This was the edition at my library

The #1920Club is hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings who share blogger reviews of books published that year.

A Killer in King's Cove by Iona Whishaw

Title: A Killer in King’s Cove: A Lane Winslow Mystery
Author:  Iona Whishaw
Publication: Touchwood Editions, paperback, 2016
Genre: Historical Mystery/series
Setting: Canada, 1946

Plot: Lane Winslow wanted to get away from London after the horrors of the war but no one was expecting her to take her modest inheritance and buy a home in western Canada.  In King’s Cove, a small town in British Columbia, Lane is welcomed by her new neighbors. 

Marilla of Green Gables (Book Review)

Title: Marilla of Green Gables 
Author: Sarah McCoy

Publication: William Morrow hardcover, October 2018

Genre: Historical Fiction

Plot: This book imagines the life of Marilla Cuthbert before she took in orphaned Anne Shirley, beloved heroine of Anne of Green Gables.  In 19^th century Prince Edward Island, Marilla and her older brother Matthew lived in Avonlea in the newly built homestead known as Green Gables.  

Apples Every Day (Book Review) #1965Club

Title: Apples Every Day
Author: Grace Richardson
Publication: Harper & Row, 1965
Genre: Children’s Fiction, School Story

This was the cover on my sister's copy

Plot: This year there are several new students at Kenner, a modern, coed boarding school in Quebec – dismal Sheila whose recently remarried mother wants to be alone with her new husband; assured and conventional Jerry, determined not to fall behind academically just because attending class is optional; and Phil, who is miserable and runs away.

Green Gables, Prince Edward Island

Anne of Green Gables has been one of my favorite books since I was 11, 

and I finally made it to Green Gables in July!

"It would give me such a thrill, Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves."

Anne's room was just as I imagined it.

We walked through the garden to the Haunted Wood...

where we met Anne Shirley, strolling by...  

Looking back at Green Gables from the Haunted Wood

Which Anne of Green Gables character are you?  

I was afraid I might be Rachel Lynde, based on some of my 

answers, but I am Anne, of course!

Visiting Lucy Maud's grave

For my Top Ten Anne Shirley-Gilbert Blythe 

Most Romantic Moments, 

click here. 

What to Read in a Blizzard or During the Long Winter

My part of Boston got about ten inches of snow yesterday so it's the perfect time to recommend some winter favorites!  These are books that would make you feel the cold even if it were a warm July day.

Children's:

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik (illustrated by Maurice Sendak) - This is one of the first books I remember, and I can hear my mother's voice reading to me:  It is cold.  See the snow. See the snow come down.  Little Bear said, "Mother Bear, I am cold. See the snow.  I want something to put on."

Snowbound with Betsy by Carolyn Haywood - Several years before I encountered Betsy Ray, I had met this other Betsy, an outgoing girl with pigtails and (later in the series) a little sister named Star.  I read every book by Haywood several times and even named my Teddy Bear after a minor character.  In this book, a storm cancels school the week before Christmas and some travelers are stranded at Betsy's home.   

Winter Cottage by Carol Ryrie Brink - A father and two daughters, down on their luck, appropriate a Wisconsin summer cottage when their car breaks down.  The father tries to repair their fortunes by entering contests while teenage Minty yearns for a permanent home.  Along with Two are Better Than One, this is my favorite Brink.

Winter Shadows by Margaret Buffie (Book Review)

Title: Winter Shadows

Author: Margaret Buffie

Publication Information: Tundra Press Hardcover, 2010

Genre: Children’s Fiction / Timeslip

Plot: Two young women in Western Canada, one in 1856 and one in the present, separated by five generations, communicate through an old diary and a cherished brooch.  Beatrice, a lovely and, unusually, educated young woman in a rural Canadian town, has returned from school to find that her father has married a dreadful woman, Ivy, who not only resents her stepdaughter but is prejudiced against her husband’s Cree ancestry (this would make more sense if it were the ancestry of the first wife – Ivy shows her distaste of her mother-in-law’s and stepdaughter’s heritage but apparently overcame her feelings with regard to her husband; I suppose because she was desperate to remarry).  Ivy’s seemingly uncouth adult son has settled nearby but Beatrice prefers the company of the new and more refined minister, Reverend Dalhousie.

The King's Daughter (review)

Title: The King’s Daughter
Author: Suzanne Martel
Publication Information: Groundwood Books/Douglas & McIntyre, rev. 1994, paperback

Genre: Juvenile Historical

Plot: Orphaned at 10, Jeanne Chatel was taken in by convent where the nuns tried unsuccessfully to turn her into a young lady. At 18, longing for adventure and aware that lack of dowry leaves her few alternatives, she jumps at the opportunity offered to orphans as an honorary “King’s Daughter” – the chance to leave France to sail to a new life with the French colonists in the New World, which means ultimately marrying a complete stranger. Although Jeanne has always envisioned herself with a dashing hero, to save her shy friend from a harsh stranger, she undertakes to marry a French trapper who lives in the wilderness, vulnerable to the bloodthirsty Iroquois. The dangers experienced in 17th century New France are vividly (and terrifyingly) depicted but Jeanne’s fearless spirit helps her overcome all obstacles to create a new life for herself.

What I liked: Someone called Jeanne the French-Canadian Anne of Green Gables, and I love that comparison. Jeanne has Anne Shirley’s imagination and longing for affection and a family. She embraces every challenge and shows great ingenuity when faced with danger. In addition, she has a love of the wilderness and the physical courage to live in a place where death is a constant threat.

What I disliked: There was nothing to criticize in this vivid and beautifully written book. Apparently some readers were concerned with the depiction of Native Americans as murderous and fearsome, and ignoring their rightful claim to the land. In the revised edition, the author points out that her depiction is from the point of view of the settler.

Source: I don’t remember who recommended this book to me but it was well worth hunting down via Interlibrary Loan. It was one of my favorite reads of 2012.

Nancy Pembroke's Vacation in Canada

"Let's go shopping this morning," proposed Nancy at the breakfast table. "Shopping?" said Jeanette in surprise. "I didn't know you meant to buy anything. What do you need?" "Oh, I need heaps of things, but I'm not going to get them. Shopping doesn't necessarily mean buying; I mean just go through the shops and be 'interested' in things." from Nancy Pembroke's Vacation in Canada, Margaret Van Epps, 1930