This a book that is wonderfully rich in content and informative as well as inspiring.
It is about an icon in Canadian History, L. M. Montgomery. She sure is one of a kind historian and I have read many of her history books over the years.
War fundamentally marked L. M. Montgomery’s personal life and writing. As an eleven-year-old, she experienced the suspense of waiting months for news about her father, who fought during the North-West Resistance of 1885. During the First World War, she actively led women’s war efforts in her community, while suffering anguish at the horrors taking place overseas.
Through her novels, Montgomery engages directly with the global conflicts of her time, from the North-West Resistance to the Second World War.
Given the influence of her wartime writing on Canada’s cultural memories, this book restores Montgomery to her rightful place as a major war writer.
The contributors to this volume reassess Montgomery’s position in the cannon of war literature. They explore three major themes in their essays: her writing in the context of contemporaneous Canadian novelists, artists and poets; questions about her conceptions of general identity, war, work, and nationalism across enemy lines; and the themes of hurt and healing in her interwar works.
Drawing on new perspectives from war studies, literary studies, historical studies, gender studies, and visual art, this book explores new ways to consider the iconic Canadian writer and her work.
This book is a wonderful read and it is a pleasure to hold and peruse.
I loved it from start to finish.
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by: Irene S. Roth
Irene Roth's Canadian Book Review Blog 