An uneven collection of stories centered around the sea or shore. This is a companion to the Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side collection, and suffers from the same issues, IMO, including an introduction that is better served as an afterward.

The final story ends on an especially sour note, which dropped the score for me. ( )

L.M. Montgomery is a long time and all time favorite author of mine. She writes the perfect girls story with just the right mix of adventure, drama and happiness. I find her books a comfort to read and have re-read most of her works many times over the years. They are classics for a reason and that reason is they are great. These are true comfort books for me and books I enjoy re-reading again and again. ( )

what can I say...I love her writing, and I love the sea. This set of short stories may be old fashioned and romantic, but I will continue to read it again and again :) ( )

This is an above average collection of stories based in Prince Edward Island. As well as pleasing tales of people, there's a wealth of information about the fishermen, lighthouse keepers, and others who live "along the shore". ( )

L.M. Montgomery scholar Rea Wilmshurst, who began presenting the author's shorter fiction, published in magazines and periodicals in her own day, but long since lost to readers, in the 1988 collection Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans, turned to the theme of the sea in this second anthology, presenting sixteen of Montgomery's stories that have a maritime setting. Here we see the author's love of the ocean, whose voice runs like a current throughout much of her work, and here we also see plot elements - an old sailor's books of reminisces, a young boy's imaginary rock people - that would be recycled in many of her more famous tales. The result is a collection with great appeal for readers who admire Montgomery's work, with stories that are enjoyable in their own right, while also offering a snapshot of their creator's development as a writer. They include:

The Magical Bond of the Sea, in which beautiful young Nora Shelley is adopted by the wealthy Camerons, who take her away from the humble fishing village where she had grown up, giving her every worldly advantage possible. Her longing for the sea, however, as well as for fisherman Rob Fletcher, is not to be overcome...

The Life-Book of Uncle Jesse, in which Mary and her mother, spending a quiet summer at Golden Gate - a family cottage at the seaside - befriend a gentlemanly old sailor named Uncle Jesse, and are the means of connecting him with a writer who uses his "Life Book," or collection of life reminisces, as a source for his new novel. Fans of Montgomery will immediately recognize, in this selection and its hero, the tale of Captain Jim, from Anne's House of Dreams.

Mackereling Out in the Gulf, which sees young Benjamin Selby, the best mackerel fisherman in his village, struggling with and conquering temptation, as he risks his own life to rescue the man who has won the heart of Mary Stella, the only girl he himself has ever loved.

Fair Exchange and No Robbery, a comic selection in which friends and roommates Katherine Rangeley and Edith Wilmer, both of whom are engaged to be married, each find themselves falling in love with the other's fiance, while separated during the holidays. As Katherine and Sidney Keith, who have bonded over seaweed and seaside excursions, agonize about their faithlessness to Edith, Edith herself is doing the same with Ned, whom she has been entertaining in Katherine's absence. Will virtuous self-denial make them all miserable, or will common sense prevail...?

Natty of Blue Point, in which young Natty Miller's bravery, in rescuing two stranded pleasure sailors one foggy night, brings a great reward to his family, when his brother Everett is awarded the keeping of the Blue Point Lighthouse - something that had previously been in doubt.

In a similar vein, The Light on the Big Dipper sees a young person, this time a girl, setting out in a small vessel to save the day. When Mary Margaret Campbell's mother leaves her in charge of her baby sister Nellie, the twelve-year-old is confident that she can manage, but then the light at the Big Dipper Lighthouse, kept by her Uncle George on an adjacent island, doesn't come on, and she knows something has gone terribly wrong. Securing Nellie, she rows across to the other island, helping to light the beacon just in time (as she later learns) to save her own seaman father, on his voyage home.

An Adventure on Island Rock sees twelve-year-old orphan and hired boy Ernest Hughes having his heart's desire granted, when Laddie - the massive Newfoundland dog who had been his best and only friend, and who was being sent away to another farm - is kept in the family after all, after rescuing the master's favorite nephew from drowning.

How Don Was Saved also features a Newfoundland dog whose heroics save the day, as the eponymous Don, under suspicion of sheep killing, rescues the son of the very man who had been demanding his death, thereby winning his gratitude, as well as a reprieve that eventually proves his innocence.

A Soul That Was Not at Home follows the story of imaginative young Paul Hubert, who is befriended by the wealthy Miss Trevor, and taken away from his seaside home to live in town. His longing for the sea, however, and for his rock people, leads him to run away on his very first night away from home. This tale is a clear forerunner of certain plot elements in Anne of Avonlea, with Paul Hubert being an earlier version of Paul Irving, who was also a poetic little soul, and who also created rock people with whom he could play.

Four Winds is the longest piece in the collection, and one of the most romantic, detailing the meeting of the Rev. Alan Douglas with the child-woman Lynde Oliver, who lived in isolation with her atheist father and her older cousin at a lakeside home outside of Rexton. Their odd courtship is stopped in its tracks by Lynde's stunning admission that she is already married, to a sailor long since disappeared - a sailor who, in a cruel twist of fate, Alan Douglas himself rescues from drowning. Or does he...?

A Sandshore Wooing is another romantic tale, one in which Marguerite Forrester, in the care of her strict, man-hating Aunt Martha, communicates with her would-be suitor - Francis Shelmardine, the brother of her schoolfriend, Connie - by means of a spyglass and sign language.

The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar sees wealthy society girl Frances Farquuhar, still smarting from a recent broken engagement, heading to quiet Windy Meadows to spend the summer with her Aunt Eleanor. Here, befriended by the minister's sister Corona, and by the minister himself, Frances finds a new interest in life by helping to assist those less fortunate than herself. Predictably, she also finds a new love...

A Strayed Allegiance details the testing of a long-standing engagement between Marian Lesley and Esterbrook Elliott, cousins and friends who had grown up together, when Esterbrook unexpectedly falls violently in love with the beautiful Magdalen Crawford, visiting her aunt and uncle in a nearby fishing village.

The Waking of Helen follows the story of painter Robert Reeves, who spends the summer inadvertently making quiet farm girl Helen Fraser fall in love with him, only to realize at the end of the season, after she has saved his life, just what he has done. The story ends tragically, as Reeves heads home to his regular life (and his fiancée), while Helen drowns herself in a local tidal cave.

Young Si sees estranged lovers reunited, when the lovely Miss Ethel Lennox comes to spend a quiet holiday at the seashore, only to discover that Miles Lesley, the fiancé with whom she had bitterly quarreled, is living nearby and working as a fisherman. Studiously avoiding one another, the pair have almost missed their last chance at happiness, when an unexpected storm throws them together again.

Finally, A House Divided Against Itself follows the story of two cousins - diminutive Big George Beelby (so named because he is the elder), and giant Little George Beelby - and their quarrel about a naked statue of Aurora, figurehead of the dawn. This story, from the characters of the two cousins to the final resolution of their quarrel, can also be seen in Montgomery's A Tangled Web, although the names have been changed in that later work to Little Sam Dark and Big Sam Dark. ( )