Rima: Green Mansions for the 21st Century

by Stan Rice

Rima Perezchica seems beyond human. She is tiny, brilliant, shy, and able to climb trees like a squirrel and glide like an insect. Her fellow graduate student in agriculture, Abel Sigüenza, finds her irresistible. Both want to return to their native South America after they get their degrees. But as soon as Abel returns to highland Ecuador, his party is ousted in a coup, and he must flee down into the rainforest. There he finds that Rima has been following and protecting him. One thing stands in the way of their she is not human.

Rima communicates with all the animals, from ants to anacondas, and coordinates their attacks on industrial incursions into the rainforest. When human political leaders discover that some person or force is causing expensive attacks on economic activity in the rainforest, soldiers capture Abel. The only thing that can kill Rima is her love for Abel.

100 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 17, 2026

About the author

Stan Rice was an American poet and artist and husband of writer Anne Rice (married 1961). He was a Professor of English and Creative Writing at San Francisco State University and retired as Chairman of the Creative Writing Department in 1989. Stan Rice died from brain cancer and was survived by his wife, novelist Anne Rice and son, author Christopher Rice.

It was the death of the couple's first child, daughter Michele (1966-1972), at age six of leukemia, which sparked Stan Rice's becoming a published author. His first book of poems, based on her illness and death, was titled Some Lamb, and was published in 1975. He encouraged his wife to quit her work as a waitress, cook and theater usher in order to devote herself full time to her writing.

Both encouraged their son, Christopher, to write as well.

He is entombed in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.