House of Dreams by Liz Rosenberg

Author:Liz Rosenberg [Rosenberg, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780763699062
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2018-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

As Maud’s fame increased, Ewan’s fortunes slowly rose. He’d become a popular minister at his small parish, and he began once more to turn his attention and ambitions to the wider world. One of Ewan’s closest friends, Edwin Smith, had fled Prince Edward Island for the larger scope of the mainland. Smith, a charismatic minister, was thriving off-island. In September 1909, Ewan followed suit and left Prince Edward Island for a double-charge parish in Ontario. There he would wait till Maud was free to marry and join him.

Maud watched Ewan’s success with a mixture of pride and horror. Exile from her beloved island home was now inevitable. Ontario was home to Toronto, the literary center of Canada, but it was a far cry from Cavendish — culturally, geographically, and emotionally.

Maud’s departure from Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, and all she held dear, weighed heavily on her in the years between the publication of Anne of Green Gables and her marriage to Ewan. Though she kept busy writing new books and rereading old favorites, she often felt depressed and worried, and aside from cousin Frede’s welcome visits, there was little to distract her. Maud suffered hard days, when she felt “depressed, tired, broken, a prey to indescribable and unconquerable unrest.” In 1908 she had a near-total collapse when a cloud of depression seemed to descend, and she could neither eat nor sleep nor work. Ewan’s only advice was for Maud to give up writing for a month. She might as easily have promised to give up breathing.

In all likelihood, Maud was in the throes of manic depression. She had always suffered from extreme highs and lows. Now she walked the floor for hours in an agony of nerves. She knew something was seriously wrong, but she refused to consult any local doctors, for fear of gossip. Leaving town — and Grandmother Lucy — was impossible, even for a medical consultation. None of Lucy’s five living children took any responsibility for their aging mother. Aunt Emily, less than thirty miles away, had visited just once in three years.

A few years earlier, Uncle John and his son Prescott had broken their chilly silence and come next door to demand once more that eighty-one-year-old Grandmother Macneill move out so that Prescott could marry and move in with his potential bride-to-be. Grandmother would be farmed out to one adult child or another. Maud would be on her own. The suggestion was met with dismay by both women.

The visit turned into a full-blown family feud, with John and Prescott pressing their case, an outraged Maud holding them off, and Grandmother Macneill weeping.

Prescott never married. Instead he fell prey to tuberculosis, the same disease that had killed Maud’s mother. Prescott’s death hardened Uncle John’s heart further against Maud and his mother. He set obstacles in their path at every turn. Maud had to shovel the snow out to the road. She placed buckets beneath more than twenty leaks in the ceiling. Chunks of plaster fell down around her and her aging grandmother.

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