Emily's Quest

Emily's Quest closes L.M. Montgomery's Emily trilogy, following Emily Byrd Starr's climb toward life as a published writer on Prince Edward Island.

Grown now and still living at New Moon farm, Emily keeps chasing the one thing she has wanted since childhood: to see her name on a book. Rejection slips pile up, her aunts worry she is wasting her years on scribbling, and she wonders, more than once, if her gift is real at all. Through it all she keeps writing, because she cannot imagine doing anything else.

Her heart is just as unsettled as her career. Dean Priest, an older friend who has loved her for years, offers her a steady, comfortable kind of devotion, and for a while Emily nearly says yes. But her truest bond has always been with Teddy Kent, the artist she grew up beside, whose feelings for her get lost again and again in pride, silence, and bad timing. Years pass with the two of them circling each other, each waiting for a sign the other is too proud to give.

This is a quiet coming-of-age story about ambition and patience, set against the fields and shorelines of Prince Edward Island. It leans on the slow ache of a long romance more than on drama, with small misunderstandings doing the damage no villain could. Readers who loved Anne of Green Gables, or anyone drawn to gentle, character-driven stories about a young woman finding her own voice, will feel at home here.

Andrew Bond reads soft and slow, and New Moon's orchards and the sound of the sea drift by while Emily waits. You'll likely be asleep well before she gets her answer.