Rilla of Ingleside by LM Montgomery

THis is the last of the Anne novels by LM Montgomery and is set in World War One. Maud Montgomery was very upset by the war; she had half brothers engaged in it, and her own marriage was unhappy. Her husband, a Presbyterian minister, began to suffer from religious melancholy and to believe that he and his children were all doomed to hell, and at times he could barely function as a clergyman. Maud became obsessed by the war, so in 1921, she published Rilla of Ingleside which covers the years of the War, and gives a picture of the life on the Home Front in Canada. Rilla is the youngest daughter of Anne, but she is not clever or artistic like her mother or her older brothers and sisters who have been going to college. Jem, the eldest boy, plans to go into medicine like his father. Rilla has no ambitions, she is 15 and just wants to enjoy herself for a few years. However, war breaks out just on the day that she goes to her first grown up party. At first many of the local people think that there's no reason to worry and that the war will be over before any Canadian troops get involved. Rilla soon finds that things are changing. Her eldest brother joins up and so do other male friends, except Walter, her poetical brother, who has been ill. She is encouraged by her Mother to take on the role of running a junior branch of the Red Cross for young women, and she starts getting involved in that.... and then to her horrified amazment, she visits a local woman to ask for donations and finds that the woman who is from a poor family, has just died after having a baby, and the baby itself is small and weak and is in the care of a drunken relative, who does not want to look after him.