If it had not rained on a certain May morning, Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different. She would have gone, with the rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington’s engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it.
Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.
Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Valancy to hopeless old maidenhood. But Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that romance would come her way yet—never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man.
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) was born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and raised by her maternal grandparents. She attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, where she completed the two-year teaching-certificate program in one year, and went on to study literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She returned to live with her grandmother on Prince Edward Island, which became the basis for her “Anne” books. The publication of Anne of Green Gables in 1908 brought her overnight success.
John Rayburn is a veteran broadcaster. He served as a news/sports anchor and show host, and his TV newscast achieved the largest Share of Audience figures of any major-market TV newscast in the nation. John is a member of a Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.