L.M. Montgomery's Personal Scrapbooks and Book Covers - Book Covers

The Road to Yesterday

The Road to Yesterday (1974) At her death Montgomery left unfinished yet another story involving Anne Blythe's family, The Blythes Are Quoted. The novel was really a collection of stories told by and about the Blythes and punctuated with poems. Thirty-two years after her death, L.M. Montgomery's younger son, Dr. Stuart Macdonald, published the book as a collection of short stories (without the poetry or connecting episodes). The name and cover of the collection are clearly nostalgic, with a drawing of Montgomery herself in a turn-of-the-century dress. There may be some sweet, simple tales here, but the first one involves a man who comes home from prison and the last one tells of the death of a supposedly colorless spinster, scorned and patronized by all around her, who recalls silently and triumphantly on her deathbed her passionate love affair with a titled painter, the life of her illegitimate daughter adopted by others, and her undetected murder of her grown daughter's abusive husband.