Rainbow Valley

Rainbow Valley, L.M. Montgomery's 1919 sequel to Anne of Green Gables, follows a minister's wild, motherless children as they turn a village upside down.

Anne and Gilbert Blythe are grown now, raising six children of their own at Ingleside, but this story belongs to their neighbors. The widowed Reverend John Meredith is a kind, absent-minded man, too lost in his books and his grief to notice what his four children get up to. Jerry, Faith, Una, and Carl Meredith run half-wild through the manse, missing meals, wearing patched clothes, and following their own strange rules of honor, and the tidy village of Glen St. Mary is quick to whisper about it.

The Blythe and Meredith children soon find each other in Rainbow Valley, a hidden glen of ferns and birches where grown-up rules don't reach. There they build a small world of games, secrets, and loyalty, even as they take in Mary Vance, a runaway girl with a sharp tongue and a hard past. Around them, the adults have their own quiet troubles, including a shy courtship between the minister and his neighbor Rosemary West that the children may end up helping along.

This is gentle, old-fashioned coming-of-age fiction, warm with small-town Prince Edward Island life, childhood mischief, and the slow work of a family finding its footing again. It's a fine follow-up for anyone who loved Anne's own girlhood, and a good fit for readers who enjoy quiet, character-driven classics over anything fast-paced.

Elizabeth Grace reads slow and gentle, with room to breathe between scenes. It's an easy, unhurried listen — the sort of old village tale that quiets the mind and makes calm company for sinking into the dark.