Freckles

This is such a sweet and lovely book. My mother introduced it to us kids when we were young and I hadn't read it since. I remember now why I loved it. Written in 1904, it has beautiful language, a sweet story, and more than anything, engaging characters. You fall in love with all of them, especially little Irish Freckles, and also in love with the Limberlost - the swamp forest she lived near and a main character in the book. Gene Stratton Porter was considered kind of a precursor to environmental writing, her love of that forest comes through the pages and you practically want to pack up and move there (and time travel to when it was like the way she wrote). It was like reading an old friend. Her other book - The Girl of the Limberlost was also one of my favorites growing up...a sort of sequel, but one that captured my imagination more, so I will be rereading that anon.