In my post about The Story Girl, I mentioned that LMM did not enjoy writing The Golden Road. As Sarah points out in her post “The Golden Road of Youth: #ReadingStoryGirl“, The Story Girl was written when LMM was still living in PEI, but The Golden Road was written after LMM was married and had moved to Leaskdale, Ontario. She suddenly had a whole new life, and new baby, and not a lot of time for writing, as much as she might have wished for it. “I have not enjoyed writing it. I have been too hurried and stinted for time.”

I enjoyed The Golden Road more than I did The Story Girl, and I think it’s because The Golden Road felt like it had more of an overall storyline, connecting the chapters more strongly than The Story Girl. In a chapter near the beginning of the book, the children get lost in a snowstorm on the way home from visiting a relative and end up sheltering at Peg Bowen’s house for the night. Peg Bowen is the unmarried woman who the children believe is a witch. She welcomes them fully into her house, feeds them and gives them places to sleep, but she also scares them with some of the things she says and does. During their stay, Peg makes comments about things the children feel she couldn’t possibly know. And when a couple of her ‘predictions’ come true later, they can’t help but wonder again about that skull Peg keeps on the clock shelf.

Another character who is given more space in The Golden Road is the Awkward Man. Sara befriends him in The Story Girl, but in The Golden Road they have become sure friends and we get the full story. LMM even gives him a happy ending. You can read more about his story in Sarah’s latest blog post.

Throughout the book, Cecily is working on a fundraising quilt on which she stitches the names of anyone who pays 5 or 10 cents to have their name added. (10 cents buys you the center of a square.) This project is on-going and mentioned in many of the chapters as she gathers names. Most notably, Cecily has collected the names of the Governor and his wife as well as the only man left in town who hasn’t been asked. Little Cecily gathers up her courage and knocks on his door and is greatly rewarded for her efforts. That is, of course, if she can prove her dedication to the cause by wearing her old dress to church that Sunday. Will she be able to carry out such a scandalous and mortifying request? How she was able to get the names of the Governor and his wife is probably the funniest story in the book – a case of mistaken identity when Aunt Eliza comes to visit.

There is a lot in The Golden Road to amuse the reader. The children “get up” a magazine–called Our Magazine–that includes a household department, etiquette department, fashion notes, etc. In the Personals, Felix writes, “A tragic event occurred last Tuesday. Mrs. James Frewen came to tea and there was no pie in the house. Felicity has not yet fully recovered.” Cecily has a very determined suitor named Cyrus Brisk. “Flossie Brisk says Cyrus is ruining all the trees on his father’s place cutting your name on them… His father told him he would whip him if he didn’t stop, but Cyrus keeps right on.” During a discussion about clover crops, Peter tells the girls not to worry if they come to be old maids, because they’ll be helping the clover crops: “The clover crop depends on there being plenty of bumble-bees, because they are the only insects with tongues long enough to-to-fer-fertilize–I think he called it–the blossoms. But mice eat bumble-bees and cats eat mice and old maids keep cats. So your Uncle Roger says the more old maids the more cats, and the more cats the fewer field mice, and the fewer field mice the more bumble-bees, and the more bumble-bees the better clover crops.” Peg Bowen’s attendance at church one morning is hilarious – she marches right up the aisle and sits next to the King children–much to their horror–and proceeds to tell mortifying stories about everyone in church. On her way out, she calls the entire congregation a bunch of hypocrites. (I wonder what LMM’s readers thought about her digs at church-goers? Especially the ones in her husband’s congregations?)

Felicity’s hurtful comments seem worse than ever in The Golden Road, and I was starting to hope someone would take her down a peg. And that it would be Peter. But he remains as loyal as ever, even after Felicity tells him she’s “sick and tired” of hearing about his Aunt Jane. And, “Your opinion doesn’t matter very much to our family.” Run, Peter!

Unlike The Story Girl, The Golden Road is full of endings. Paddy gets his ending, as does the Awkward Man and Aunt Olivia. And the three missing fathers come home. The time has come for Felix and Bev to go back to Toronto, and Sara’s father is taking her to Paris. Even Peter will not be around as much – since his father has come home, he no longer needs to be hired out and can go back to school. LMM is able to provide her kind of happy ending when these three absent fathers come home. Not only do they come home, but they’re jolly and doting and make their children happy – something LMM always longed for from her own father. And, of course, she can avoid marriage altogether for her central characters by keeping them too young to marry.

The last line in The Golden Road is “The story girl was gone.” Again, I am left wondering about what will happen next… Will they see each other again someday? Will the Story Girl become famous like everyone supposes she will? Will the prophecies she made of her friends’ futures come true?

“The Story Girl was gone” has a wistful feel to it. Maybe it’s also an allusion to the fact that LMM herself is gone. No longer on the island telling stories. From now on, her stories will be coming from Ontario.

There is a well-known quote from Anne of Green Gables about the month of October: “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” In The Golden Road, “You may never know what scarlet and crimson really are until you see them in their perfection on an October hillside, under the unfathomable blue of an autumn sky. All the glow and radiance and joy at earth’s heart seem to have broken loose in a splendid determination to express itself for once before the frost of winter chills her beating pulses.”

There is also a passage about the human-ness of trees that I like: “They are the most friendly things in God’s good creation… And it is so easy to live with them. To hold converse with pines, to whisper secrets with the poplars, to listen to the tales of old romance that beeches have to tell, to walk in eloquent silence with self-contained firs, is to learn what real companionship is.”

And what about the maples?: “Maples are trees that have primeval fire in their souls. It glows out a little in their early youth, before the leaves open, in the redness and rosy-yellowness of their blossoms, but in summer it is carefully hidden under a demure, silver-lined greenness. Then when autumn comes, the maples give up trying to be sober and flame out in all the barbaric splendour and gorgeousness of their real nature…”

I believe that I am rather like a maple tree. How about you?

Be sure to check out these other blog posts that have been written about The Story Girl and The Golden Road:

My introduction post: The Story Girl Readalong: #ReadingStoryGirl

#ReadingStoryGirl: “There is such a place as fairyland—but only children can find the way to it…”

On Sarah’s blog:

An Invitation to read The Story Girl and The Golden Road

A Necklace of Expressive Words

“The best piece of work I have yet done” #ReadingStoryGirl

“This old blue chest holds a tragedy” #ReadingStoryGirl

“The Golden Road of Youth” #ReadingStoryGirl

“I always supposed everyone thought in colours” #ReadingStoryGirl

On Marcie’s blog:

November 2023, In My Bookbag (also, L.M. Montgomery)

On Rebecca’s blog:

The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery (1911) #ReadingStoryGirl

If I’ve missed you, please let me know or leave a link in the comments!

Photo Credits: Daughter #1