Anne's House of Dreams

Anne's House of Dreams follows L.M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley into marriage, and into a small white house on the shore of Four Winds Harbour.

Anne and Gilbert Blythe are newly married, and their first home together sits above a blue harbor where ships pass and a lighthouse keeps watch. Their closest neighbor is Captain Jim, an old sailor full of sea stories and quiet wisdom, who becomes something like family. Down the road lives Leslie Moore, a strikingly beautiful young woman trapped in a marriage that has given her little joy. As Anne settles into this new life, she and Leslie grow close, and the House of Dreams becomes a place where old sorrows are aired and new ones arrive in their turn.

This is the fifth book in the Anne of Green Gables series, and it moves Montgomery's world from schoolroom and orchard into the quieter business of marriage, neighbors, and the first years of adulthood. There is warmth here, and real hardship too, but always told with the same gentle humor and eye for small-town character that made Anne's earlier stories so loved. It's a book about building a home, choosing your community, and finding out who your friends really are once the wedding is over.

Fans of the earlier Anne books, or anyone who loves unhurried domestic classics with a strong sense of place, will feel at home in Four Winds. Elizabeth Grace reads low and slow, letting the harbour light and the sweep of the lighthouse settle you in for the night. Nothing here is in any hurry — a good voice to sleep to, in a little house by the sea.