A Girl of the Limberlost

<p>Set amid Indiana's vast Limberlost Swamp this treasured children's classic mixes astute observations on nature with the struggles of growing up in the early 20th century. </p><p><br></p><p>Harassed by her mother and scorned by her peers Elnora Comstock finds solace in natural beauty along with friendship independence and romance. -- </p><p>Cornfields soy fields alfalfa fields - Indiana has long been seen as an agricultural plain. </p><p><br></p><p>But to make it a lucrative farming state much of the land had to be deforested leaving behind devastated habitats. The Limberlost a wetland in northern Indiana was mostly destroyed by drainage logging and oil production. </p><p><br></p><p>Gene Stratton-Porter an early 20th-century naturalist and novelist captured the fading beauty of the swamp in books like A Girl of the Limberlost a novel about a smart ambitious girl who lives in the dwindling wetland with her mother and pays for school by collecting local moth specimens to sell to naturalists. </p><p><br></p><p>The book isn't exactly an environmentalist tract but it makes the case nonetheless: It celebrates the beauty and richness of the swampland while showing how easily economic forces push landowners to strip it away.</p>