Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy

What a lovely story! I must say, before reading this book, I had never thought too much about the Marilla character and what her backstory was. This was such a great rendition and I was entertained immensely with it. It did make me wonder what L.M. Montgomery’s version would have been. Would it have been similar? Or completely different? I enjoyed immensely seeing how Marilla’s and Matthew’s sibling relationship with each other was from when the book starts to the end, and leading into when we meet them again in Anne of Green Gables.
In this book Marilla’s relationship with John Blythe was beautiful yet heartbreaking all at the same time! On the one hand, I totally wanted them to be together; but on the other hand (reality) I knew that they wouldn’t be together and that they couldn’t so that John’s son and Anne could meet and write their own story.

“Plucky and ambitious, Marilla Cuthbert is thirteen years old when her world is turned upside down. Her beloved mother has dies in childbirth, and Marilla suddenly must bear the responsibilities of a farm wife: cooking, sewing, keeping house, and overseeing the day-to-day life of Green Gables with her brother, Matthew and father, Hugh.
In Avonlea—a small, tight-knit farming town on a remote island—life holds few options for farm girls. Her one connection to the wider world is Aunt Elizabeth “Izzy” Johnson, her mother’s sister, who managed to escape from Avonlea to the bustling city of St. Catharines. An opinionated spinster, Aunt Izzy’s talent as a seamstress has allowed her to build a thriving business and make her own way in the world.
Emboldened by her aunt, Marilla dares to venture beyond the safety of Green Gables and discovers new friends and new opportunities. Joining the Ladies Aid Society, she raises funds for an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity in nearby Nova Scotia that secretly serves as a way station for runaway slaves from America. Her budding romance with John Blythe, the charming son of a neighbor, offers her a possibility of future happiness—Marilla is in no rush to trade one farm life for another. She soon finds herself caught up in the dangerous work of politics, and abolition—jeopardizing all she cherishes, including her bond with her dearest John Blythe. Now Marilla must face a reckoning between her dreams of making a difference in the wider world and the small-town reality of life at Green Gables. ” (Goodreads)
This is a must-read for any fan of the world of Green Gables!!

*My progress for the Canadian Book Challenge is 5/13!!

The Quintland Sisters by Shelley Wood

This was a really fascinating book! I don’t want to spoil the book for those who haven’t read it, so I’ll keep my post fairly general and spoiler-free.
This fictional book looks at the true-life story of the Dionne Quintuplets who were born in 1934 and were the first quints to survive. They became a national phenomenon and a huge tourist attraction. This story is told through journal entries and letters of one of the nurses who care for them.
The true-life story of these children is a sad aspect of Canadian history.

“Reluctant midwife Emma Trimpany is just 17 when she assists at the harrowing birth of the Dionne quintuplets: five tiny miracles born to French farmers in hardscrabble Northern Ontario in 1934. Emma cares for them through their perilous first days and when the government decides to remove the babies from their francophone parents, making them wards of the British king, Emma signs on as their nurse.
Over 6,000 daily visitors come to ogle the identical “Quints” playing in their custom-built playground; at the height of the Great Depression, the tourism and advertising dollars pour in. While the rest of the world delights in their sameness, Emma sees each girl as unique: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Émilie. With her quirky eye for detail, Emma records every strange twist of events in her private journals.
As the fight over custody and revenues turns increasingly explosive, Emma is torn between the fishbowl sanctuary of Quintland and the wider world, now teetering on the brink of war. Steeped in research, Quintland™ is a novel of love, heartache, resilience, and enduring sisterhood—a fictional, coming-of-age story bound up in one of the strangest true tales of the past century.” (Goodreads)

*My progress for the Canadian Book Challenge is 4/13!!