Red-haired, freckled, and talking before she's barely through the door, Anne Shirley arrives at Green Gables as an orphan nobody quite knows what to do with. She has opinions on everything, an imagination that runs several miles ahead of common sense, and an absolute gift for landing herself in the most spectacular scrapes. She also, despite everyone's best intentions, is impossible not to love. Prince Edward Island wins her heart. Diana Barry becomes her bosom friend. And Gilbert Blythe, who makes the catastrophic mistake of calling her "carrots", makes himself her sworn rival.

Growing up, it turns out, is the greatest predicament Anne Shirley has ever faced. At sixteen, Anne steps into Avonlea's classroom as its new schoolteacher — determined, responsible, and ready to give back to the town that shaped her. But life has its own curriculum. Between meddling in a friend's thwarted romance, mothering two new orphans at Green Gables, and navigating the joys and heartbreaks of her students, Anne begins to discover that adulthood is far messier, far richer, and far more complicated than any book ever warned her.