Lucy Maud to the Rescue

"Reading gives us somewhere to go when we have to stay where we are."
- Mason Cooley

"Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet."
- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

If there's a better place to hide from reality than Lucy Maud (L.M.) Montgomery's Avonlea, I haven't found it. Since I first read Anne of Green Gables as a little girl I have escaped to Anne's world countless times, suspending cynicism and losing myself in the author's inexhaustible descriptions of "amethyst skies," "pearly white blossoms" and "stormy seas." Montgomery wrote eight books about Anne and her family, and described Prince Edward Island, Canada, so lovingly that pilgrims used to go there from all over the world. I wrote my college thesis on Montgomery and tried to name our oldest Anne Shirley (Ann is my mother's name and Shirley was Rob's grandmother's). The name didn't stick but I have never shaken my infatuation with Anne's adventures.

Anne and her family faced hard times - the books aren't at all Pollyanna-ish, as some think - including illness, death, and war. In the final book Rilla of Ingleside, which describes the adolescence of Anne's youngest child (named for Marilla, Anne's adoptive mother) the family lives through World War I and sends three sons to the European front. As I read last night it came home to me that humans have suffered through years of war and plague in the past, and that we are just the latest generation to do so.

The rest of my family has their noses in other series. William is storming through George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series and Daniel is escaping to J.K. Rowling's world in the Harry Potter books. Aden just finished classes at CU, so hasn't started a series, but called her three-hour timeout for free reading last week the "best three hours she ever spent."

We'll keep escaping to our favorite books, or preferably a series that will keep us in their worlds, suspended, for some time. We can escape, find support and even courage in our favorite books, whose authors gently remind us that folks have had tough times before and can get through them, together.

Stay safe and well.
xoxo
Laura