The Blue Castle

The letter arrives in a fierce black hand, postmarked Montreal, and Valancy Stirling carries it up to the one room where she is allowed to be alone — yellow floor, cracked ceiling, a hooked rug with a grinning dog. She is twenty-nine and has never had a wholly happy hour. The doctor gives her a year. She tells nobody.

She walks out of her mother's house to keep house for Roaring Abel Gay and nurse his dying daughter, telling the family she has kept up appearances long enough and is going in for realities. Beyond Deerwood lie the pine islands of Mistawis and a man the county has decided is a criminal. One of the few novels she wrote for adults, and the only one set far from Prince Edward Island.