Mama Kat Thursday: Favorite Read

The Mama Kat prompt I chose today is to share about a favorite read.

My absolute favorite book is, "My Blue Castle" by
 L.M. Montgomery, the same author of Anna of Green Gables. 

It's a yellowed, worn paperback that I re-read from time to time.

I like it because it's  a classic ugly-ducking-turns-into-a-swan story. It's set in Canada around 1920 and is about a young woman named, Valency.

She's almost 29, an old maid by social standards of the day with no hope of any marrying prospects She's an introverted, meek girl who feels stuck succumbing to every whim of her domineering Mother and her Mother's cousin as well as having to endure all the eccentricities of all the local high-brow relatives.

Her's is a drab life and to make-up for it, Valency lives an imaginary day-dream life in her mind where she is the princess of a beautiful blue castle and can do what she likes and is courted by every handsome prince of the land.

Valency also suffers a minor chest pain and secretly sees a local doctor her family would never approve of her seeing, but before he can tell her a diagnosis, he's called away by a family emergency and promises a letter.

A few days later, Valency gets his letter informing her she has a chronic condition and less then 6 months to live.

From that day forward, Valency was different. She felt like she'd never lived and that she is about to die, she makes up her mind to live---to her family great horror and astonishment.

First she takes a "job" nursing a old school mate friend of hers, to the shock of all her relatives. Then she also gets to know a young man, named Barney, who drives around in a rickety vehicle, is something of a hermit and the subject of all sorts of speculative rumors. She tells him that her days are numbered and asks him to marry her.

He agrees, they marry and Valency discovers a wonderful life living in his cabin deep in the woods on a island between two rivers, a life she finds so enchanting, she begins to think it as of her "blue castle" in reality.

Then after months of happiness, Valency gets a letter from her Doctor that he send her the wrong letter. She wasn't going to die, in fact, she was going to live.

Appalled she's lied to Barney, she leaves him a note and slinks back home to live with her domineering Mother and her cousin again, resigned to resume her old pathetic life.

But it turns out that Barney had a couple secrets himself and the discovery of who he really is changes everything into a happily ever after.

Thanks for Visiting

(photo is from Pixabay)