The book begins with Anne and Gilbert's wedding, which takes place in the Green Gables orchard. After the wedding, they move to their first home together, which Anne calls their "house of dreams". Gilbert finds them a small house on the seashore at Four Winds Point, an area near the village of Glen St. Mary, where he is to take over his uncle's medical practice.

In Four Winds, Anne and Gilbert meet many interesting people, such as Captain Jim, a former sailor who is now the keeper of the lighthouse, and Miss Cornelia Bryant, an unmarried woman in her 40s who lives alone in an emerald-green house and deems the Blythes part of "the race that knows Joseph". Anne also meets her new neighbor, Leslie Moore, who lost her beloved brother and her father, and then was forced by her mother to marry the mean-spirited and unscrupulous Dick Moore at age 16. She felt free for a year or so after Dick disappeared on a sea voyage, but Captain Jim happened upon him in Cuba and brought him home, amnesiac, brain-damaged and generally helpless, and now dependent on Leslie like a "big baby". Leslie becomes friends with Anne, but is sometimes bitter towards her because she is so happy and free, when Leslie can never have what Anne does.