Anne Of Green Gables, My Daughter, And Me book explores abandonment

A new book about P.E.I.'s favourite fictional redhead, Anne Of Green Gables, My Daughter, And Me explores what it means to be an orphan.

Michigan-based author and blogger Lorilee Craker is a lifelong Anne fan.

She says a few years ago she was reading Anne of Green Gables to her then-seven-year-old daughter Phoebe, whom she adopted from South Korea, when Phoebe asked, "What's an orphan?"

Craker said, "And it was one of those moments that just kind of hangs in the atmosphere in neon lights, and I knew it was a big moment."

"I said, 'Well, Anne was an orphan because her mommy and daddy died when she was a baby.'"

My story began in this mess, in the debris of lust, loathing, abandonment and grief. Yet this messy beginning would not have the last word.- Lorilee Craker

Craker then went on to explain that she herself was an orphan. Her birth mother couldn't take care of her, so she was adopted by a Winnipeg couple. 

She also explained to Phoebe, "You were a kind of orphan too, because your birth mother couldn't take care of you, so mommy and daddy came to Korea and we adopted you."

While she says her daughter absorbed the information and moved on, the question nagged at her. 

'Strong connection to Anne'

"I wanted to braid my adoption story with Phoebe's adoption story and Anne's adoption story," she remembers. "I tell people this is a book for the orphan in us all."

The subtitle reads: What my Favourite Book Taught me About Grace, Belonging, and the Orphan in Us All.

To research the book, Craker visited P.E.I. several times, interviewing Anne aficionados and relatives, and reading up on author Lucy Maud Montgomery. 

She says when she first read Anne of Green Gables at age 13, she didn't know why she felt such a kinship to the over-achieving, book-loving fiesty orphan. 

"I thought she was delightful and funny, openhearted and joyful. I didn't really realize until years later that probably my being adopted had something to do with my strong connection to Anne, who is also adopted."

In 1968, Craker was given up by a single, 22-year-old student in Winnipeg.

"My story began in this mess, in the debris of lust, loathing, abandonment and grief. Yet this messy beginning would not have the last word," she writes in the book. 

"I think that we have all felt at one time that we are not enough. We are not smart enough, pretty enough, cool enough, thin enough, the list goes on and on. So I believe this book speaks to the woman who has felt like she's been abandoned."