Rilla of Ingleside (anne of Green Gables, #8)

The final novel in L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series shifts focus from Anne Shirley Blythe to her youngest daughter, Rilla, and follows the Blythe family of Glen St. Mary, Prince Edward Island, through the four years of the First World War.

In the summer of 1914, fifteen-year-old Bertha Marilla "Rilla" Blythe is a pretty, carefree girl whose only ambition is to have a good time. She lives at Ingleside, the Blythe family home, with her parents, Dr. Gilbert and Anne Blythe, and Susan Baker, the family's devoted housekeeper. Rilla's older siblings are at various stages of young adulthood: Jem, twenty-one, has completed his first year in medicine; Walter, a sensitive aspiring poet who recovered from typhoid the previous year, has been teaching and plans to enter Redmond College; twins Nan and Di are also college-bound; and Shirley, sixteen, attends Queen's Academy. The household also includes Gertrude Oliver, Rilla's beloved teacher and boarder, whose prophetic dreams recur throughout the war years. The Blythe children are close with the Meredith children from the neighboring manse, the local minister's home, and family friend Miss Cornelia Elliott hints at budding romances between Jem and Faith Meredith and between Jerry Meredith and Nan.

On the night of a dance at the Four Winds lighthouse, Kenneth Ford, a handsome university student and the son of family friends, singles Rilla out and spends a romantic hour with her on the sand-dunes. Then a partygoer arrives with the news that England has declared war on Germany. Walter speaks prophetically of a spectral Piper whose music will lead boys away to death, but most of the young people shrug off the announcement. Rilla's evening ends in humiliation when her friends accidentally leave without her and she must walk home barefoot with Mary Vance, a sharp-tongued local girl.

Within days, the war consumes everything. Jem announces he is enlisting, and Jerry Meredith joins him. Mrs. Blythe is heartbroken but will not hold her son back from his duty. Rilla retreats to Rainbow Valley, a beloved wooded dell near Ingleside, where Walter confides his deep shame at being afraid to enlist. He dreads pain and mutilation, not death, and Rilla comforts him, marking the moment he begins to treat her as a confidante rather than a child. She resolves to be brave and organizes a Junior Red Cross society among the Glen's young girls.

When Jem and Jerry depart by train, Dog Monday, Jem's homely but fiercely loyal mutt, refuses to leave the station. He takes up a permanent vigil in a shipping shed, meeting every incoming train and watching for his master.

While collecting Red Cross supplies, Rilla discovers a newborn baby whose mother has just died, tended only by a drunken relative. The infant's father, Jim Anderson, has gone to England to enlist. Rilla impulsively takes the baby home in a soup tureen, the only vessel available. Dr. Blythe tells her she must care for him herself. Though terrified of handling an infant, Rilla accepts, following a childcare manual with fierce determination. She names the baby James Kitchener Anderson, called "Jims" for short. Through sleepless nights and exhausting days she bonds with him, and one night, taking the crying infant into her bed, she realizes she loves him.

The war grinds on. Walter, tormented by guilt and a cruel anonymous white feather, a taunt implying cowardice for not enlisting, writes anguished letters to Rilla about his inability to go. Kenneth Ford's injured ankle heals and he receives a lieutenant's commission. Jem writes from the trenches describing horrors but affirming the cause. The battles around Ypres in spring 1915 bring weeks of dread before letters confirm that Jem and Jerry are safe.

Kenneth visits Ingleside on his last leave before going overseas. Despite comic interruptions from a screaming Jims and Susan's stream of embarrassing childhood anecdotes, the evening ends with Ken kissing Rilla on the veranda steps, her first kiss, and asking her to promise not to let anyone else kiss her until he returns. She promises, and her mother later confirms that Rilla may consider herself engaged.

After the sinking of the Lusitania makes it impossible for Walter to stay behind, he enlists. He is awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal for rescuing a wounded comrade under fire and writes a short poem, "The Piper," in his trench dugout. Published in the London Spectator, it becomes the war's most celebrated poem. Rilla masterminds a secret war-wedding for Miranda Pryor, the daughter of the Glen's obstinate pro-German elder, and Private Joe Milgrave, a local soldier who loves her, since Miranda's father would never permit the match.

That September, Dog Monday howls from midnight to dawn at the station, something he has never done before. Five days later, Dr. Blythe tells Rilla that Walter has been killed in action at Courcelette. She collapses, and Mrs. Blythe falls gravely ill from grief. A final letter from Walter arrives, written the night before the battle. He tells Rilla he saw the Pied Piper again, marching across No Man's Land, and knows he will not return. He asks her to keep faith with the fallen. Rilla gives the letter to Una Meredith, one of the minister's daughters, after recognizing that Una loved Walter silently and will carry that hidden grief alone.

During a blizzard, Jims nearly dies of croup when the doctor is away, but Mary Vance arrives through the storm and saves him with an old folk remedy. Shirley, the last Blythe son at home, enlists in the flying corps. The Canadians capture Vimy Ridge; Jerry Meredith is seriously wounded but survives.

Through 1917 and into 1918, Rilla endures the long middle stretch of the war. In March 1918, Germany's massive spring offensive breaks through the British line, plunging the household into despair. In May, Jem is reported wounded and missing after a trench raid. Susan checks on Dog Monday and learns he did not howl the night of the raid, as he did when Walter died. She takes this as proof Jem is alive, and the family clings to Monday's unbroken faith.

The Allied counteroffensive at the Marne in July turns the tide. Jim Anderson writes that he has married a kind Englishwoman and is coming for Jims. In late September, a cable arrives from Holland: Jem has escaped from a German prison camp. On November 11, the Armistice is signed, and the Glen celebrates.

The soldiers return through the winter and spring. Carl Meredith, one of the manse boys, comes home having lost the sight in one eye. Miller Douglas, a local soldier who courted Mary Vance before the war, returns with a wooden leg and marries her. On a quiet spring afternoon, Jem steps off the train at the Glen station. Only the station agent and a small, stiff, rheumatic dog are there. Dog Monday flings himself at Jem in an ecstasy of joy. His long vigil is over.

Rilla, now nineteen, reads that Captain Kenneth Ford has returned to Canada but hears nothing from him for two weeks. She sinks into loneliness, convinced he has forgotten her. Then the doorbell rings. A tall soldier with a white scar across his cheek stands on the steps and calls her "Rilla-my-Rilla." She stares, unable at first to recognize the changed man. He looks at the woman she has become. Every emotion of the four war years surges through her. She tries to speak, and the old childhood lisp that embarrassed her at their first meeting returns one final time: "Yeth," says Rilla.