Mary Henley Rubio has spent over two decades researching Montgomery's life, and has put together a comprehensive and penetrating picture of this Canadian literary icon, all set in rich social context. Extensive interviews with people who knew Montgomery - her son, maids, friends, relatives, all now deceased - are only part of the material gathered in a journey to understand Montgomery that took Rubio to Poland and the highlands of Scotland.

From Montgomery's apparently idyllic childhood in Prince Edward Island to her passion-filled adolescence and young adulthood, to her legal fights as...