00:02:47.640Okay. I'm in Canada. So I'm just curious what your experience was of The Anne of Green Gables
00:02:53.980books that led you to a point of wanting to write this novel.
00:02:57.500I treasured The Anne of Green Gables books growing up. So I was very close to my grandparents who
00:03:06.460lived in small town, Iowa, and I would go visit them every summer. My grandma introduced me to
00:03:12.280the Anne of Green Gables books. I remember reading the whole series in her house,
00:03:16.700have read them many times since, and then just devoured everything by Ella Montgomery that I
00:03:22.920could find. And then watched the CBC series too with my grandma. I remember many tear-filled
00:03:29.680filled afternoons spent in her house, watching that series together. And I had such a strong
00:03:37.360connection to the Anne of Green Gables character. I think my whole life I've struggled with
00:03:43.780putting myself out there and, you know, self doubt. And I just I loved, you know, Anne of
00:03:51.140Green Gables and her vibrancy and also her unfiltered ways. That was so much a way of being
00:03:57.540that I that I wanted to adopt for myself, you know, her dreams of writing her, the vastity,
00:04:06.020those things were so appealing to me and her real, you know, deep care, care for Matthew and Marilla,
00:04:13.520that relationship reminding me of my relationship with my grandparents. So really special place in
00:04:18.680my heart. And you mentioned that you like you read all the Ann books, and then you went on to
00:04:22.880read the other books that she's written as well, because I know there's like the Emily series,
00:04:27.020and then what's called like The Blue Castle, I think, which is almost like an adult book a bit.
00:04:33.140Yes. And The Story Girl, which is one of Ellen Montgomery's favorites as well. So
00:04:39.440she's written 20 novels and then was prolific. I mean, she published hundreds of stories
00:04:45.220and poems as well. It's just, it's really interesting to me, like as a Canadian person
00:04:51.120to see the effect that Anne McGregor Gables has on people from other countries as well.
00:04:55.640Because sometimes I don't know if it's just like, this is a really big thing here, or if it's like, oh, no, people from all over, you know what? And like, as a child, I remember I went on a trip to Prince Edward Island, and it was international tourists. There's people there from, you know, Japan and all kinds of places. And I'm like, oh, this isn't just famous in Canada. This is like, everyone around the world loves Anne of Green Gables.
00:05:15.960Yes, it's so striking, right? I visited as well when I was doing research and just amazing. I mean, a huge following in the Netherlands, like you said, in Japan, across, you know, the UK, it makes sense as well, but then a huge American following too.
00:05:33.700And I think what I found in the States in particular, people have heard of Anne of Green Gables, but people don't know as much about Ellen Montgomery, the author. I think my understanding is that in Canada, she's a lot like Mark Twain is here.
00:05:49.020You know, this, she became almost a celebrity that has continued to have that celebrity status where she was a public figure as well as this, you know, as the creator of a famous character. And I think here in the States, a lot of people that I, that I meet know the name Anna Green Gables, but they don't know the name Ellen Montgomery.
00:06:10.260It's interesting to me. I sort of think of Ella Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables in a similar
00:06:15.200way to like Louisa May Alcott and Jo March. But I think people think they know about Louisa May
00:06:21.820Alcott because Jo March is a writer and she had sisters like she did. So it's like the stories
00:06:26.560are similar, whereas Anne of Green Gables and the other books that Ella Montgomery wrote were not
00:06:30.360autobiographical in the same way. So she's a bit more arm's length, I think.
00:06:34.740That's right. That's right. I do think that Anne in some ways served as an alter ego for Maude,
00:06:40.680you know, that there were emotions. Maude was certainly a precocious and wildly imaginative
00:06:47.800little girl who I think experienced a lot of loneliness in childhood, a lot of the same
00:06:53.200sorts of feelings that Anne did. So I think there are emotional resonances there, but certainly,
00:06:58.820you know it was not autobiographical and so like just turning talking to your book that's just come
00:07:05.260out after Anne so it's a story about Maud like that's what you call her I think that like she's
00:07:10.300Lucy Maud Montgomery but she went by Maud right she went by Maud yes yeah and so you're looking
00:07:16.280at the book and it's not sort of like a you know birth to death story it's looking at specific
00:07:20.620parts of her life before I guess not talking about your book specifically yet but just like
00:07:25.540set up for everybody who don't know, like, what was Maude's childhood like? How did she get to
00:07:30.080the point that you talk about in your book? Yes. So, you know, Maude was raised in Prince
00:07:35.920Edward Island. She lost her mom at a very young age. Her mom died when she was 21 months, which
00:07:43.280having a 20-month-old right now myself just is so striking what that loss must have been.
00:07:51.120She lost her mom young, and then her father, who, you know, very grief stricken, understandably, soon after that left her in the care of her maternal grandparents, so her mom's parents. And he was in the picture. He continued to live on the island and visit regularly for some years, and then he moved to Prince Albert on the mainland.
00:08:13.940But he continued to be in Maude's life. She revered him. But her primary parents became her mom's parents. And, you know, they were folks who had thought that they were done with child rearing when this little girl shows up in their lives and had that, I have Scottish heritage, they definitely had that Scottish heritage, you know, kind of hard edged manner of raising that I think created a lot of feelings of loneliness.
00:08:43.700in this girl with huge dreams and incredibly smart and driven. And I think that she experienced
00:08:53.780a lot of loneliness in her childhood. Certainly she was well-liked, but she took to diaries as
00:08:59.940a refuge really early on, which is something that I relate to. I had a lot of those same feelings
00:09:05.620when I was young and was driven to write from a young age as a way of expressing my deepest
00:09:11.840emotional truths. And I started writing diaries really young. Ma did that as well. She ended up
00:09:18.200burning her first diary that she ever wrote, which I think is just indicative of sort of
00:09:24.080how who she was, this really complex, interesting person who, you know, used it as a place of
00:09:32.840refuge, but then had this sense of shame around it that it was too juvenile that she ended up
00:09:37.200burning it later. She was very successful in school. She went to teacher's college,
00:09:44.920taught on the island for a number of years. She never really enjoyed teaching.
00:09:50.300She started to have bouts of winter melancholia, she called them, you know, when she started
00:09:54.340teaching on the island, but she loved it because she could write, you know, it afforded her time
00:10:00.940to write and an income. And she started putting stories out there into the world and was
00:10:06.780very prolific in writing them. Her grandfather's death, in some ways, there's a mirror to
00:10:14.460Matthew passing and Anne taking care of Marilla in what Maude chose to do after her grandfather
00:10:23.180died. She went to stay with and take care of her grandmother, which gave her even more time to
00:10:29.360write. She helped her grandma manage the mail from the old house, but it was also a pretty
00:10:34.340isolating life. And that's where the story of After Anne begins. I was really interested in
00:10:39.900this character on the precipice, this woman on the precipice of huge success, and then what comes
00:10:46.860after that huge success. And in terms of her age as well, like she started, like she got married
00:10:54.440what we would consider later in life, like especially for, you know, the 1900s. And then
00:11:00.700she started sort of seeing her writing success also later in life. Can you talk about like,
00:11:05.220I don't know if you know offhand, but like kind of how old she was when those things happened?
00:11:08.860Yes. So she began her process of writing Anne of Green Gables in her early 30s. It was published
00:11:17.740when she was 33. So just, you know, after her 33rd birthday. And in her 20s, she was publishing
00:11:23.820regularly stories and poems and she had the attention of male suitors she was not lacking
00:11:31.460for suitors she had a number of men who proposed but she really struggled with and had various
00:11:40.540levels of feelings for for these different men but she really struggled and I have her at the
00:11:46.540beginning of the book in this bind of considering whether to remain what she called a spinster
00:11:51.780and what was called at the time, you know, known as a spinster and really prioritize her writing
00:11:57.700or marry. And she's in this consideration in her early thirties at that point, that was so late
00:12:05.200for marriage. You know, she'd rejected a number of these suitors or the relationships had fallen
00:12:09.760apart. And she was really, I think, you know, at her core, what was most important to her was
00:12:16.380this dream of writing. And so that was what she was pursuing most single-mindedly. And then got
00:12:22.680to this point in her early 30s, you know, she's right on the verge. She's imagining the character
00:12:27.520of Anne. She's beginning to write Anne and she's realizing it's kind of now or never. Do I marry
00:12:33.980or not? And starts to feel a lot of internal pressure. And I was so interested in what that
00:12:38.060would, you know, that feeling. I think it's something that those of us, like me, who've
00:12:42.880always wanted to write and are trying to juggle. I mean, it's so much in the female experience,
00:12:49.260right, of trying to juggle jobs and dreams and relationships and whether to have children. And1.00
00:12:54.500those are things that I've wrestled with so much. Those are things that she wrestled with. And so
00:12:58.280I have her at the start of the book in that kind of wrestling match. And she at that point has this1.00
00:13:06.040suitor candidate who is a minister who is preaching in Cavendish where she's, where she's
00:13:14.180grown up and he, you know, is getting a lot of good recognition in town and he is interested in
00:13:20.920her early on, but she has a lot of hesitation about being a minister's wife and what that will
00:13:26.400mean and what that will mean for her writing career. She wants kids, but she doesn't know
00:13:29.920that she wants to marry him. And there's this real struggle. And so your book is told in
00:13:35.720well, I guess it's still in kind of three time periods, if you include sort of the framing
00:13:39.620device with her sons. But you've got her struggle, like that time period is one time period that you
00:13:44.580have kind of later in her life, seeing what she's up to. And part of that, like her journals from
00:13:48.680those eras do exist, right? But with some exceptions, and that's part of what you're
00:13:53.520playing around with, right? Yes, yes. So she published posthumously, her journals have been
00:14:02.100published. They're absolutely exquisite volumes. They were journals. She started this project of
00:14:09.200recopying her journals in 1919 in middle life, right? You know, end of the first world war,
00:14:17.200Spanish flu is raging. And she starts this product project of recopying her journals that she
00:14:22.340finishes, you know, at the end of her life, 1942. So it's this huge undertaking of recopying,
00:14:28.140which I just find so fascinating. And in that process, she's certainly revising, extracting.
00:14:36.200There's evidence of her razoring out pages, even in the recopied volumes. And there's her
00:14:41.380biographer, Mary Henley Rubio, who's done this incredible biography, Lucy Mount Montgomery,
00:14:47.200The Gift of Wings, that was a huge resource to me, a fantastic book in its own right.
00:14:53.080And, you know, she talks about places where the journal record and the historical record don't quite square and where there are these gaps and understanding. And so that was something that I was so interested in and where I felt like there was space for a fictional reimagination.
00:15:12.960Exactly. Because like the journals exist, like those are published. If people want to know what
00:15:17.480she's going through in those periods, like you could read that from her, but then where,
00:15:21.740where there's a gap. Absolutely. And as much as possible, I really hewed closely to those
00:15:28.380journals. And so, you know, wherever there is something known, I didn't, you know, come up
00:15:35.620with something unknown. It was really where there were gaps that I found such interest in
00:15:42.680imagining into those. And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.
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00:18:12.000and we're back well and i think also just as a writer just as anyone with an imagination that's
00:18:19.880so interesting to think about like what did she not want people to know about those like really
00:18:24.660interesting things, right? Like, yes, right. Especially for somebody who, I mean, these
00:18:31.920journals are on the one hand curated, on the other hand, so vulnerable, you know? And so for somebody
00:18:38.420who was so open about so much of her life, now she did intend for them to not be published until
00:18:43.420after her death, which is another interesting thing, but, but she was open, you know, she wrote
00:18:47.940journals and then wanted, intended them to be published. So what would somebody like that,
00:18:51.540who had that intention to hold back, you know, what would she even in that revealing want to
00:18:58.040keep hidden? I found that so interesting. And so part of what happens in her story,
00:19:03.920and I mean, this is just biographical information. It's not like spoilers for your novel.
00:19:07.840So she ends up marrying Ewan and she becomes the preacher's wife. And then he has some mental
00:19:14.900illness struggles, right? That's right. And I think that those were not known to her when they
00:19:23.440were in their courtship phase. She certainly had hesitations and she wrote some of those in her
00:19:30.120published journals. And the biographer, Mary Henley Rubio has said, those are some of the
00:19:35.580pages that were razored up. So even their proposal was something that she didn't even like her
00:19:41.240recopied version and read it. So there's, she was certainly very careful about that historical
00:19:45.720record. I don't think that certainly not the extent of his mental health struggles later in
00:19:51.300life. Those were not things that she saw coming and they really informed so much of their,
00:19:58.080their married life together, starting from about that middle age point.
00:20:02.620This is okay. I'm going to make a comparison just because we're recording this when we were
00:20:06.300recording this the queen charlotte series has just come out on netflix and it's just interesting
00:20:11.300because that's also the story of like a woman involved with a man having mental health struggles
00:20:16.060and kind of how that affects the the woman and the relationship and then mod had her own her own
00:20:23.360struggles i mean again like this is not a spoiler for your book like the book starts with her son
00:20:29.060like finding out that she has died by suicide like that is not a secret twist in the book so
00:20:36.020knowing that that is how her story ends you know how is that part of your just in writing her story
00:20:43.340for me that was that was the initial question that was so striking to me so backing up a bit
00:20:52.340i'm i'm somebody who's always from age 10 been driven to write and also have tremendous fear
00:20:58.420of putting my writing out there in the world. And so something that's been most helpful to me
00:21:04.500along the way is to know what other writers went through and to know that they had their own
00:21:10.980struggles and that I'm not alone in my doubts and my insecurities and the tremendous vulnerability
00:21:15.780of putting writing out there. So that's just made me somebody who always goes hunting for
00:21:20.360the story behind the story. I love to not just love a book, but to know more about the writer,
00:21:25.820the creator of that book. And so in Bed One Night at a Lake House, it was late at night,
00:21:33.220and I was doing one of my little digging missions for the stories of writers whose books I love.
00:21:40.160And I learned about that note by Lucy Mom Montgomery's bedside that had been covered
00:21:49.420up for many years, that there was this note that reads a lot like a suicide note beside her bed.
00:21:54.580and you know what could that mean um and she says you know what an end to a life in which i tried
00:22:00.660always to do my best despite many mistakes which you know to this day it just gives me you know
00:22:06.460makes me feel so deeply and to know that she'd written such a life-affirming character one of
00:22:12.560my favorite characters in fiction and you know that that her life ended in this way in which
00:22:18.960And, you know, she says that nobody would imagine what her struggles have been. So, you know, she's saying in that note that there's a lot that she hadn't revealed at the end of her life. And that was so poignant, so striking to me. And I just found myself, I really wanted to know more. I really wanted to understand her emotionally and to understand the ups and downs of her life.
00:22:44.040because I think, you know, when we tell this, when we learn about author success and we know
00:22:49.000about Lucy Mount Montgomery's tremendous success, her fame, her celebrity, that's one thing. But I
00:22:55.080think sometimes that actually can, can hurt inspiration because it makes it seem like
00:23:02.080it's impossible or like, you know, it will never measure up to, to that person, but to know the
00:23:07.600full story of somebody's life, because we all have struggles, we all have things we go through.
00:23:11.600I think that can be even more inspiring. And so I went into her story with that goal.
00:23:18.740And that was information that I think this was in your, the afternoon or something in your book,
00:23:23.180like the family kept hidden that this was her cause of death until I think it was 2008,
00:23:27.700they publicly revealed it, right? Yes, that's right. And, you know, to be fair, it's the probable,
00:23:34.840the, you know, based on the evidence that we know cause of death, and based on the fact that that
00:23:41.400note was there by her bedside and what we know about the end of her life, including her writing
00:23:48.080and one of her final passages in her published journals, I shall be driven to end my life. So
00:23:53.860there's good evidence for that. It's a really interesting, like having read an early copy of
00:24:00.380your book, I think that you do such a really respectful and interesting job of looking at her
00:24:06.380as a whole person, not defining her by, like you start off being like, this is probably how she
00:24:10.800died. But then you're looking at who is this person? And it's not like a tragic story. It's
00:24:14.740not like a sad story. It's like, who was she? And this is what happened at the end. Like,
00:24:19.100so I think you did a really good job of balancing that to, yeah. So just, I don't know,
00:24:24.340congratulations. Like, and I want the listeners to not think like, oh, this is going to be like
00:24:27.900a sad book. It's not at all. I'm so glad to hear you say that because that was not at all my,
00:24:34.880my intention and I so I so deeply admire and respect Maude and her life has informed mine
00:24:43.680in so many ways I'm so grateful for that and I really I wanted to uncover who this who this
00:24:49.640person was and have so much compassion for where she was you know at the start of it of my book
00:24:56.240you know the precipice of becoming the famous author and so much compassion for who she
00:25:00.860was and where she was at the end of her life too. And I think part of what I'm going to guess,
00:25:07.720I guess I'll ask you because you wrote the book, but part of what that balance is, is that it's not
00:25:12.180like a chronological story. Like you're going back and forward in time, like from that time
00:25:15.980period where she's deciding to get married, she wants to publish a book and then what her life
00:25:19.340is later. So you're flipping back and forth. So it's not just kind of like her life was like this
00:25:22.760and this and this and this it's, which I think also helps represent like she was not just one
00:25:27.200thing was that that was part of your decision in having the the dual time periods yes it was
00:25:33.400was very much to show you know her complex you know multi-faceted self and it was also
00:25:42.960I really I wanted I did not want the book to end with the tragic note of her death alone
00:25:52.380That's certainly a note and a component of her life. But I love the idea of coming back to this seminal weekend of her life when she's really in this struggle of a decision of, do I marry and sacrifice some things or do I really pursue my writing and only my writing for the rest of my life?
00:26:18.340And that, I think, is such an interesting decision, a relatable one to many of us today.
00:26:25.600And I think that it just, it's, you know, going back and forth between that weekend and then what happened after.
00:26:34.260I hoped that there were, you know, resonances where those timelines would speak to each other
00:26:40.560and create an emotional depth that, you know, wouldn't be as easily obtained by just having
00:26:47.820one straight timeline. And I think also, like you were saying, you know, you like reading the
00:26:53.140stories of writers and how did they get to where they were and like what their struggles were and
00:26:58.000stuff. And I think part of her story that I find, like, not just as a writer myself, but like as
00:27:03.020just as a person who's like living in like my middle age to see that she started what some
00:27:09.440people would consider older, right? Like not just marrying and having children, but her success came0.52
00:27:14.760to her in her like mid thirties and then like on through the next couple of decades. And I think
00:27:20.880there's a lot of pressure, especially now, I don't know, you know, there's things like it's the 30
00:27:25.140under 30 lists or like this author just published her first book and she's 20. Like there's so much
00:27:29.340pressure, I think, on people to succeed at a very young age. But she is so beloved. She was so
00:27:34.940successful. And she, she, when was Anne-Marie Gables published? Like she was in her, what did
00:27:39.640you say, 33 or something like that? Yes. Which, you know, in modern day equivalent, that would be
00:27:45.820more like mid forties, right? In terms of lifespan and where she was in her life. And yes, I love
00:27:53.040stories like that I love to know that you know success could come at any point and I find that
00:28:01.220to be really deeply reassuring too and so that was that was a key piece and also that story of
00:28:09.960you know a choice to marry can be a really complicated one and it can happen kind of at
00:28:18.060any time in life that's a that's a key piece of her story too i think also like aside from her
00:28:24.740being based on a real person and those are her experiences it's rare to me in my reading to read
00:28:30.600about a character who's this age like characters and books are often 25 or something like that so
00:28:36.000it's just interesting to read about someone who had who is a bit more has lived through some stuff
00:28:40.360like at the point where she's deciding even whether she wants to marry like she's not a young naive
00:28:45.14020-year-old. Like she's someone who's lived a life and knows what it's like and knows what it's like
00:28:49.940to not be married. So I appreciated just reading about, and I guess in contrast to the fact her
00:28:54.520most famous character, like Anne Shirley grows up, but she's most famous as an 11-year-old. So it's,
00:28:59.500I don't know. So it was just nice to read about a woman in her middle years, I guess. That's rare
00:29:05.700to me in my experience as a reader. It is. And that's interesting that you say it. I'm
00:29:12.400so interested in that middle life period. And Maude was open about her struggles in writing
00:29:19.640and in middle age. She said she got bored of her in middle age. And if you look at her
00:29:23.420fiction, there are so many young characters, there are so many old characters. And she had
00:29:28.280such joy, I think, in creating those ages. And there's many components to that. But one that's
00:29:35.660occurred to me when I've been reflecting is that you can make an old person or a young person
00:29:40.140much more unfiltered, right? And fun. And they are too old to care or too young to care about
00:29:47.020other people's opinions in many ways, or at least more so. And so I think she could have so much fun
00:29:51.980with that. But, you know, she was really caught up in her whole life with this bind of other
00:29:57.660people's opinions and her own internal struggles about what to keep private, what to reveal. And
00:30:03.500that to me is so much of middle life, right? And something that I very much relate to being in
00:30:09.960that stage myself and that's where the fascination lies but it's also really hard to capture and
00:30:17.000I could tell you I wrote and rewrote this book many times really trying to each time understand
00:30:23.460Maude more deeply you know get at her character more deeply and I think a lot of why the process
00:30:31.100took so long was the fact that in middle age people are people are complicated I have a I
00:30:38.560don't know, just a fun question for you. So what are your favorite Ella Montgomery books,
00:30:44.800having read all of them? Oh, my gosh, the original Anne is just my absolute favorite,
00:30:51.580and will always be. But I really love the story girl too. And that's one where I have lines
00:30:58.740underlined that I come back to. And you know, her journals, if I could recommend that those who know
00:31:06.020something of her or like her work, read anything, it would be her journals. I found them, you know,
00:31:12.760you would, you would think they might be, there are many, it's a voluminous set of journals. And
00:31:17.860so it's a big undertaking, but they are really compelling reads in their own right.
00:31:23.240So, and I think that's like the, her writing is so revered and so beloved, but that's why I wanted
00:31:30.580to ask you that because a lot of people might've only read Anne or maybe only read a couple of
00:31:34.560the Anne books, but just to know that she's written, you said, what, 29 books?