The tribal stories, several of which Montgomery tells straightforwardly in her brief autobiography,
The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career (1974), are exploited to good effect throughout her fiction.
When Montgomery was not quite two her mother died of tuberculosis, and the child was thenceforward brought up by her strict Presbyterian maternal grandparents, the Macneills, on their homestead at Cavendish, near the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career, which originally appeared as a series in the Toronto magazine Everywoman's World (June-November 1917), Montgomery shows a remarkable memory for details and stresses her happier memories, shading them only slightly with the inevitable fears and pains of a sensitive youngster. She celebrates the natural charms of Prince Edward Island--"the most beautiful place in America, I believe. Elsewhere are more lavish landscapes and grander scenery; but for chaste, restful loveliness it is unsurpassed." She sketches the romantic fantasies she wove around trees, flowers, kittens, brooks, and the red rocks and vast stretches of platinum-colored sand of the Cavendish shore.
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