When Montgomery's classic tale begins, the twelve-year-old Anne has just been sent to Prince Edward Island after a stint in a Halifax orphanage. But what readers have long wondered is what happened before she arrived. What shaped her? And how did this beleaguered, carrot-top orphan emerge as an articulate, imaginative and optimistic young heroine? These questions and more are finally answered in a beguiling new prequel commissioned to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of this enduring classic.