I saw this book at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City and had to have it. The Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables: The Enchanting Island that Inspired L.M. Montgomery by Catherine Reid is a beautifully produced book that takes the reader into the hearts and minds of Anne Shirley, main character, and Lucy Maud Montgomery, author. Prince Edward Island, Canada sits at the top of both my and my daughter’s bucket lists of places to visit. After reading the books and then watching the Anne of Green Gables movies starring Megan Fellows, we fell in love with the stories.

As a landscape designer, I notice landscape settings in books and movies probably more than most. I see landscape design everywhere and understand it to be central to plot and character development. As a writer, I am intrigued by how fiction writers pull in readers using detailed descriptions of landscape. In movies it is more evident how screenwriters and producers use the landscape.

Reid completed extensive research on PEI and on Montgomery while writing this book. She includes a complete story of Montgomery’s life, comparing the similarities and differences with Anne’s. Montgomery was a photographer, colorizing many photographs at later dates. These photos, as well as those of professional photographers, and historical photos fill the pages, giving visuals for Anne’s and Maud’s stories. Reid identified buildings, lanes, ponds and woods as those Montgomery described in the books. Illustrations from the original versions of the novels add authenticity to Reid’s book.

The Anne books have led tourism to be the island’s second most important industry. Development has encroached on some of the pastoral and natural areas. But, according to Reid, many of the settings of the lives described in the book exist today. The island is about 40 miles wide and 140 miles long. There are dunes, marshes, ponds, beaches, farmland and woods. Prince Edward Island is located off the eastern coast of Canada, nestled between the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There is an Island Nature Trust, protecting wildlife habitat since 1979.