The Story Girl

The Story Girl is L.M. Montgomery's gentle Prince Edward Island classic about a summer of cousins, secrets, and one unforgettable storyteller.

Young Beverley King and his brother Felix leave Toronto to spend a year with family on the old King homestead in Carlisle, a farm with an orchard, an apple barrel, and a house full of cousins. There they meet practical, pretty Felicity, who can cook better than she can keep a secret; soft-hearted Cecily; restless Dan; and their neighbor Peter Craig, the hired boy who dreams of being a minister someday. But the cousin who matters most is Sara Stanley, known to everyone simply as the Story Girl. She isn't the prettiest of the bunch, but the moment she opens her mouth, nobody notices or cares.

Sara can turn anything into a story: an old blue chest in the attic, a family scandal half-forgotten, a ghost said to walk the nearby woods, even the ordinary business of a full moon rising over the orchard. Chapter by chapter, the children's small dramas unfold against the turning seasons — quarrels made up, secrets kept and told, a magic seed planted just to see what happens — and through it all, the Story Girl's voice is what holds the whole loose, sunny world together.

This is a quiet coming-of-age book, more a string of remembered summer days than a single plot, steeped in old-fashioned Prince Edward Island farm life and the particular magic of a child who can make anyone listen. It's perfect for listeners who loved Anne of Green Gables and want more of Montgomery's warm, unhurried world, or for anyone who simply enjoys a well-told story about storytelling itself.

Andrew Bond reads at an easy pace, well suited to a dim room and a heavy head. Let the orchard, the old farmhouse, and the Story Girl's low voice carry you off before the tale is through.