Pat of Silver Bush

Pat of Silver Bush L.M. Montgomery Date: 1933   —   $4.99   —   Book product page Rating:

Fiction, Children's

When you go used-book saling, you discover many things. Everyone knows of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series. Emily of New Moon is also well known. Some people even remember Jane of Lantern Hill (see a trend here?)— mostly due to the fact that it was made into a television movie shortly after the Anne series.

But this last go-round, I ran across books I'd never heard of. Pat of Silver Bush. The Golden Road (and the predecessor I have to track down, The Story Girl.) Kilmeny of the Orchard. And the fact that when they started compiling her short stories, instead of the dozen or so listed in the official catalogues, Montgomery had written over five hundred published stories. (Many of those are variants on a theme, but hey.)

So Pat of Silver Bush is the story of the most amazing homebody I've ever run across. She loves her home far too much, to the point where she'll drop a friend rather than hear her beloved acres maligned. The normal run of Montgomery tales of growing up form the basis of her life, including finding dear friends and having illnesses and meeting the boy you just know she's going to marry someday after she gets courted by all the wrong boys.

I've given this book a lower score than I normally give Montgomery because Pat's resistance to change is almost pathological. She cries when trees are cut down, dead or not. She can't stand her old clothes being destroyed. And she won't move out of Silver Bush without a crowbar. It's disturbing.