Somewhere between Green Gables and Avonlea there is a Blue Castle....
Lucy Maud Montgomery, internationally best-selling Canadian author, wrote about girls who escaped into the wild when the world stopped making sense. Her girl-protagonists straddle the line between 'civilized' towns of the 1900s, and the mystic wilds of magical girls, young psychics, and natural witches.
29-year-old Valancy Stirling had always been out of step. Elfin and something of a changeling as 1920s ladies go, she's suddenly faced with harsh reality when she's diagnosed with a fatal illness of the heart. Bullied by her well-heeled, stuffy, and judgmental family, Valancy has grown up without love. Now she's forced to realize she will likely die before she's ever lived! The distant dream of having a home and loving family of her own-her Blue Castle-will wither unless she takes drastic action. And once Valancy knows she has nothing to lose? Everything changes.
Full of humor and transformation, this relatable story of a young woman pushing the limits of her repressive family and social order belongs on the shelves of lovers of Classics like Jane Eyre, and Emma. But it should also be within arm's reach of modern book and film fans, those who loved Crazy Rich Asians, and Harry Potter. It belongs anywhere where readers savor just desserts, and delight in how the tables turn.
'The Blue Castle' is a fairy-tale upheaval of the status quo, where underdogs can rise, and the cruel get what they deserve. With a fresh Foreword by Grenfell Campus' Dr. E. Holly Pike, Associate Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, aimed at the value of the wild and being different to L.M. Montgomery's heroines!
Calling all readers who love A Secret Garden, Emma, and Y.A. books like Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty!
Get it today!
Lucy Maud Montgomery - Maud to friends - was the creator of Anne of Green Gables, who wrote 20 novels and hundreds of short stories and poems in her lifetime. It might seem she wrote solely what she knew - the idyllic and individualistic lives of young ladies in small town Canada. However, Maud was a caregiver for a mentally ill loved one, and waged a lifelong war with her own depression, one that might have taken her own life in the end. Throughout, she took refuge in writing. Whatever storm buffeted, her pen lit fires in the human imagination, not the least of which was her own.In writing Maud could fight. She could rebel against oppressors who were too big to fail, tradition, the repression of women, and the wasted potential of girls. With the slash of a pen, she was more, greater than the roles she was forced to play. This led to towering scenes of freedom, whimsy, and romance, and to forbidden topics familiar to paranormal Young Adult genre lovers today: girls with psychic powers; elfin children; and young, quirky witches, knit into prose. Valancy, often compared to an elfin changeling, is one such heroine, now yours to embrace.
