The Song of the Cardinal

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to read a novel about birds.

“You mean, the birds are the characters?” I gave my mother a skeptical look. To be sure, our new friendship with Gene-Stratton Porter should have left me little room to doubt. On the heels of ‘Freckles’ and ‘Laddie’, it was a safe assumption on my mother’s part that another of Porter’s books would not fail to lay claim to the imagination of three teenagers. And this one came with the backing of both Mrs. Downs and her sister, Miss Edith, who often spent afternoons in the shop and who had her own decided opinions on what made for a good story.

Mrs. Downs had let us borrow a very valuable first edition of the book because she simply could not be satisfied unless we had the gorgeous tinted photographs to accompany the tale that the author had labored with such loving diligence to provide with her text. It seems that the ‘Bird Woman’ in some of Gene Stratton-Porter’s fiction is none other than a representation of herself. She was known to spend hour upon hour in stealthy observation of the birds of the swamp and woods, and was rewarded for her pains with photographs of these exquisite creatures that were really quite remarkable for their day.

In The Song of the Cardinal, Porter takes the reader along as an intimate observer, following one of nature’s most ardent lovers from his spring migration to his amorous pursuit and courtship of a shy little dove-colored maiden. With great tenderness and the accuracy of a naturalist the habits of the cardinal are rendered in genuine drama that will be sure to enchant anyone who has been awakened to the romance of God’s creation.