Rilla of Ingleside

or

Jack Crawford says he is going to the war because he is tired of farming. I hope he will find it a pleasant change.

Rilla of Ingleside (#8/1920) picks up about eight years after Rainbow Valley's ending, with Anne's youngest daughter Rilla about to turn fifteen, totally unaware of the storm about to descend on the world. England declares war in one of the first chapters of the book, and Germany sues for peace in one of the last chapters. Rilla goes from fourteen to nineteen. These are four years which she, at the beginning of the book, says she expects to be the happiest and most exciting of her life. Instead she grows up. She raises a war baby (James Kitchener, she names him, but calls him Jims) by book, endures constant suspension and dread with millions of others as all three of her brothers and many of her playmates (and, of course, a love interest) enlist and go overseas. This book is very different from all the other Anne books, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in history or even anyone who is engaged with current events right now. There's a lot of text devoted to the characters' talk about the war - military strategies, political developments, philosophy, religion - grappling with how to endure what must be endured. Montgomery clearly carried heavy the weight of that war. It's evident in both this book and Rainbow Valley. The stakes are never far from the forefront. Meanwhile, there are laugh-out-loud moments and crying moments and practical parenting moments (I now know what to do if a baby has the "real croup" and I happen to have sulfur in the house). Of all the Anne books, this is the one I'd recommend to anyone who isn't interested in any of the other aspects of the books. This one feels like a perspective of history. And, thinking that she went back to write Anne of Ingleside in 1939, on the brink of the second World War, I have to forgive her for wanting to go back and spend more time with Anne's younger family, in the days before wars like that were thought possible.