The book starts with Anne’s marriage with Gilbert, which is very small and happens in the Green Gables orchard. After the marriage, they move to a house that Anne has long anticipated as her “house of dreams”, in Four Winds Point, an area near the village of the Glen St. Mary.

There, Anne and Gilbert meet many interesting people, such as the eccentric Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia Bryant, who deems the Blythes as part of “the race that knows Joseph.” Anne also meets Leslie Moore, who lost her beloved brother and her father, and then was forced to marry Dick Moore because of her mother.

She became miserable when her husband returned mentally disabled from a trip. She becomes friends with Anne, but is sometimes bitter towards her because she is so happy and free. In the middle of the book, Anne gives birth to her first child, Joyce, who dies shortly afterwards [as Montgomery's second son did].

After that Anne and Leslie become closer as Anne is more able to understand Leslie’s unhappiness after her own tragedy - as Leslie puts it, her happiness, although still great, is no longer perfect so there is less of a gulf between them.