It is certainly hard to begin reading "Rilla of Ingleside," knowing it is the eighth and final book in the Anne of Green Gables series. When it was written in 1921 it was actually the sixth book that L.M. Montgomery wrote in the series. Years later she would add "Anne of Windy Poplars" as the "fourth" book and "Anne of Ingleside" as the sixth, pushing this one to eighth place. The title character is Rilla, born Bertha Marilla Blythe (named for Anne"s mother and the old maid who adopted the red-headed orphan), the youngest of Anne and Gilbert"s daughters. The novel is set about a decade after Montgomery"s previous Anne novel, "Rainbow Valley," which was more about the four children of the new widowed minister John Meredith, who become good friends with the Blythe kids. Most of the novel is set during World War I, which is one of the most interesting aspects of the story for me. As the novel begins Rilla is almost fifteen years old, with bright hazel eyes and a dazzling smile. Rilla is still looking forward to her first romance and for her the most important thing in the world is going to her very first dance at the Four Winds lighthouse and getting her first kiss from Kenneth Ford. But the story takes a dramatic turn as the shadow of the World War reaches all the way to Ingleside. Her brothers, her friends and her beau go over the ocean to fight in France and Rilla brings home an orphaned newborn in a soup tureen and organizes the Junior Red Cross. Everything takes on new meaning when there is a war going on, waiting to hear from the battlefields of France and Susan wondering when America is finally going to get involved so the Allies can win and the boys can finally come home. American involvement in that war was pretty brief, so what I found fascinating is to see that war from the Canadian perspective, as it drags on year after year. Young men get killed in a war and that tragedy touches the Blythe family.