New material about the private life of Lucy Maud Montgomery has prompted a searching look at the beloved author of Anne of Green Gables. While her fictional characters inhabited a world where love and close community bonds overcame all tribulations, Montgomery's real life was marked by grief and loneliness. Married to a clergyman who suffered from a debilitating mental illness, Montgomery struggled to keep up appearances in a Victorian society that valued propriety at all costs. As she aged, depression engulfed her; nonetheless, throughout her life, she maintained her prolific output of fiction, attracting ever-increasing numbers of fans. Acclaimed novelist Jane Urquhart has written several novels centring on the role of the artist. Here, she explores the life of a woman whose successful literary career broke the boundaries set for women of her time, but who could not escape the societal strictures of Victorian Canada or her own demons.