I Never Knew About This "Classic"!

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This quaint, old fashioned book caputured my interest for most of this Saturday morning. The writing style reminded me of Anne of Green Gables, The Two Altheas or How Green Was My Valley. There is something to be said for books like these that capture what are now considered old-fashioned values and contrasting them with the transient enjoyments of society.

Elnora has no father and her mother treats her resentfully due to the circumstances that surround her father's death. Much of the book centers around Elnora's doubt of her mother's love and the tension in their relationship because of this. Her mother seems a hard woman and because of the lack of warmth Elnora finds relief and comfort in nature. Elnora is smart! She collects moths and butterflies and arrowheads which she sells to collectors so that she can pay her way through high school. She dearly loves to learn. Elnora is proud and doesn't like to accept help from her Aunt and Uncle, or really anyone for that matter. She has self-determination and figures out what she needs to do to succeed.

Although Elnora lives a life of hard knocks, she demonstrates the virtues of kindness, love, forgiveness and self-denial. That last virtue is one that we don't seem to value so much in our current culture of instant gratification. Her patience and understanding surrounding the circumstances of her life eventually lead to healing with her mom, and peace for her soul.

There are bits in the book that I love as relating to her relationship to "the Almighty". If you are one that's annoyed by those references this may not be the book for you. I however, enjoy them, if only for the picture it gives us of how people wrote about God in the past.

I would read it again (lucky for me, it's on my kindle so I can do that whenever I please). As an additional bonus, it was free (thanks Amazon).

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