The Blue Castle

Written By L. M. Montgomery

Browbeaten and stifled by her overbearing family members, Valancy Stirling finds consolation in her imaginary Blue Castle, a place where she leads a fantasy life and where all her dreams come true. After a life-changing medical diagnosis, Valancy rebels against her relatives and sets off on a new life — leading her to discover freedom, friendship, and a love that she had never thought possible. In The Blue Castle (one of a few adult books that she wrote) Lucy Maud Montgomery created a novel that is inspiring, hopeful, and humorous — it will have the reader swinging from sympathy and frustration to laughter and joy. And the glorious descriptions of Muskoka, in which the novel is set, make this truly a book to linger over. And to reread.

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L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942), a noted Canadian writer, was born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island as the only offspring of John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. As a child, Montgomery found solace in her imagination, nature, writing and books. During her school days in Prince Albert, Montgomery published her first work, a poem entitled “On Cape LeForce,” which was published by a Prince Edward Island Newspaper. Throughout her time spent in Cavendish, Montgomery wrote numerous poems, serials and stories that she submitted without fail to British, American and Canadian magazines. Though she received many rejections, Montgomery achieved a life for herself as a writer. In 1905, Montgomery published Anne of Green Gables, despite receiving multiple rejections from publishers. It was an immediate success which launched a fruitful writing career for her. She married Reverend Ewan Macdonald in 1911 and together the couple had three sons, one of whom was stillborn. Upon her husband’s retirement from the ministry in 1935, Montgomery and Macdonald moved to Toronto in order to be close to their family. A few short years later in 1942, Montgomery died and was returned to Prince Edward Island where she was buried in Cavendish cemetery, close to her home. Published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s birth on 30 November 2024, The Blue Castle is set in Muskoka, Ontario and is the only Montgomery novel set outside of Prince Edward Island.