The choice for for Carrie’s book club for the month of June is A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter, chosen by Stephanie at Simple Things. I had read both Freckles (linked to my review) and A Girl of the Limberlost as a child and for years had wanted to read them again, so I was glad this challenge gave me the impetus to do so.

A Girl of the Limberlost is a sequel to Freckles, but it can easily be read alone. Freckles and the Swamp Angel are referred to and appear later in the book, and the events of this book take place near the Limberlost forest and swamp.

But this is the story of Elnora Comstock, a teen girl about to enter high school, indeed to enter public school for the first time. Her mother doesn’t place much value in school and doesn’t give Elnora any encouragement or even advance preparation. So Elnora goes the first day and embarrasses herself by expecting books to be provided only to find out she has to pay for them and tuition as well. She is embarrassed by her clothing, hat, and shoes, too. Knowing her mother will never grant her the needed money, Elnora stresses over how to come up with it and then is told that the Bird Woman (also from Freckles and still not given another name) will pay for certain items of nature: moths, nests, cocoons, etc.

Elnora’s mother cares for her on some level, but that care is eclipsed by grief over her husband, who died in the swamp years earlier, and by resentment toward Elnora as the reason Mrs. Comstock couldn’t go to him.

The Comstocks’ neighbors, the Stintons, are friendly with Elnora and help her as much as they can. About the only time Mrs. Comstock ever takes any pains with Elnora is in a type of competition with the Stintons, or when she thinks others will see and care, such as with Elnora’s school lunches.

Things continue on this way until a couple of major incidents threaten to affect Elnora’s relationship with her mother permanently .

That’s the first half or so of the book: that crisis is resolved and the second half covers another storyline: a young man who is a relative of one of the townspeople comes to recuperate after being seriously ill. He sees Elnora hunting moths, knows something about them from his studies, and begins to help her. Her mother immediately sees him as a possibility for Elnora, but he is engaged to a “strictly ornamental” high society girl back home, and the rest of the book plays out that situation.

Elnora is not quite as idealized as Freckles was in the previous book, but she is still admirable for her pluck, determination, hard work, thriftiness, intelligence, and kindness. And there is again the theme of someone coming from humble circumstances yet working hard and making something of themselves, but without reference to “noble blood” this time.

I don’t know Porter’s religious background — I thought I had read that her father was a pastor, but I can’t find that piece of information now. But though I would not call this a Christian book, there are a couple of passages in the book that refer to God in a wonderful way, particularly when Mrs. Comstock watches a newly-hatched moth expanding its wings and is so caught up in wonder that she glorifies God for His wisdom in its creation and declares she never felt so in His presence as at that moment. In another place, when a different character has to face the consequences of her sin, the author says, “The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.” My first thought was that I am glad that we don’t have to pay them, that Christ did for us. But she wasn’t speaking of that so much as the consequences or “come-uppance” a person has to deal with when their sin “finds them out.”

I spoke in my review of Freckles about the difference between naturalism and environmentalism. There is not as much of that kind of topic in this book, but one passage stood out to me. Elnora says “Sometimes I think it is cruel to take such creatures from their freedom, even for an hour, but it is the only way to teach the masses of people how to distinguish pests they should destroy from the harmless ones of great beauty.”

I had to admit I smiled a bit at all the mention of the beauty of moths: I tend to see them only as pests that eat clothes. And I thought it was absurd that a high society girl allows a whole ball given in her honor to be decorated in the colors of a rare moth when she personally couldn’t stand them.

I listened to most of this book as an audiobook and then finished it by reading the rest. Even though it is written in an old-fashioned style that is a little melodramatic and drawn-out in places, it was enjoyable.

The choice for for Carrie’s book club for the month of June is A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. I had read it and Freckles by the same author when I was a child and wanted to read them both again: the book club choice provided a good opportunity.

Actually, I listened to them via audiobook, and I started with Freckles since it comes first chronologically before A Girl of the Limberlost.

Freckles first appears as an older teen-ager of Irish descent seeking a job at a logging camp in Indiana’s Limberlost forest. He had grown up in an orphanage where he had been left as a baby newly missing one hand. He was never given any other name. The boss, McLean, takes a liking to him and gives him a chance as his guard to walk the perimeter of his property twice a day and check the lines, making sure no one has trespassed. A former disgruntled employee had marked some trees to sell to a rival logging company, so theft was a real danger, as were rattlesnakes and other creatures native to the forest and the swamp.

Various noises and movements in the forest scare him at first, but soon he becomes used to them and then enthralled with the creatures and plants there. An urge to learn more about them leads to a purchase of nature books from the city.

After Freckles tells one of the men about the antics of one of the birds, the man suggests sending for a lady only known as the Bird Woman who travels around to photograph various birds. When she comes, she brings a teen-age girl as a helper. When Freckles first sees her, he dubs her the Swamp Angel, and that’s the only name we know her by. My main memory of reading the book the first time was the scene where he first meets her, and I couldn’t remember if she was a person or an image or what: it all seemed very ethereal in my memory. But she is very much a real girl.

The rest of the book details the various adventures and troubles they encounter and seems mainly to show Freckles’ character. It’s very much an old-fashioned book with the two main characters idealized to the point of almost no wrong, but they are both admirable: noble, loyal, kind, trustworthy, hard-working, going above and beyond the call of duty. There are some unrealistic places, such as the Swamp Angel giving suggestions to the logging camp men about how to best set up their tents and to the cook about how to prepare his meals, and they all take it appreciatively because she’s so wholesome and beautiful…

Though the book is not primarily a romance, the two do fall in love, but it is a problem because the Angel is from a rich family with a long and noteworthy bloodline, and Freckles’ heritage is unknown. It’s strange, but evidently the thinking of the time must have been that one’s character is determined by one’s bloodline: such a view doesn’t leave much room for salvation or a bettering of oneself. Freckles thinks he is unworthy of the Angel because of the people his must have been, but she feels his exemplary character must have come from a noble people. It’s sad that Freckles’ character and what he has made of himself doesn’t speak for itself.

Knowing Porter was a naturalist, I am not sure if her reason for writing the book was just to display a noble character in various circumstances or to place a story in her beloved Limberlost. I had a feeling the Bird Woman was based on herself, and there is much detail about the flora and fauna of the area.

The book also caused me to think about the differences between a naturalist, a conservationist, and what we would know today as an environmentalist. At least in this book Porter seems to love nature and want it preserved as much as possible and not wasted, but she also seems to have no problem with cutting down trees to make furniture or killing an otter expressly to make a muff as a gift for a lady. Nature is not intended for worship, it can be used, but it needs to be used carefully and wisely and not wasted or ravaged.

I was surprised at the number of occurrences of variations of the word “damn” in the book.

Though I usually enjoy reading actual ink and paper books more than listening to them, I think I might have grown a little tired of this one as a book. It worked well as an audiobook I could listen to while driving, etc. The production value was not as good as others I have heard: there was a little background noise, and it seemed as if it were read by a teacher or librarian, whereas with other audiobook narrators I had the sense the story was being told rather than read. Although the narrator didn’t employ different inflections or voices with different characters, I did enjoy the musicality of Freckles way of talking, tinged with an Irish lilt but not quite a brogue.

I’m glad I revisited this story. I don’t know that I would do so again any time soon, but it was neat to flesh out the memories of this book from my childhood.

(Updated to add: I just noticed that at the moment this is free for the Kindle. I don’t know how long it will be.)