I’m participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge, where I post every day in the month of April (except Sundays) and each day is a letter.

My theme for the month is a series of posts about the things that shaped me.

Valancy Stirling

L.M. Montgomery created several female characters that have stuck with me my entire life. I’ve already talked about Anne, her most well-known, and Emily, the one who most fascinated me. But there’s another that I adore, and I don’t want her forgotten.

Valancy Stirling is the main character in The Blue Castle, a novel that skews more adult then some of Montgomery’s other works. We don’t meet Valancy when she’s a girl, but instead a twenty-nine-year-old spinster (the horror!). She’s quiet, mousy, and forever the mental punching bag of her older, richer, prissier, “better” family members. The only happiness she has is in her imaginary Blue Castle, and her nature books.

But then one day, she gets diagnosed with a terminal heart disease, and that’s when everything changes. She decides that she will live the rest of the life she has exactly the way she wants, say what she wants, live where she wants, and will suffer her terrible family no longer.

And in true Montgomery fashion, she does all of it with humor, laughter, and even a little heartbreak.

It’s another ugly duckling tale, along the lines of Now, Voyager, so if you like that sort of thing, please read it. And even though the plot is certainly predictable, it’s wonderful in its predictability.