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Nature's Storyteller: The Life of Gene Stratton-porter
As a young girl growing up in the 1860s on a Wabash County, Indiana, farm, Geneva Grace Stratton received a wondrous gift from her father, Mark, who had noticed his daughter s love for nature and wildlife, especially the larks, cardinals, passenger pigeons, swallows, and hawks that flew overhead. He declared that all birds on the farm belonged to her, and she was to become their protector. From these early beginnings, Gene Stratton-Porter found a purpose for her life sharing the outdoors with others through writing and photography and working to conserve nature for the generations to come. By the time she died at age sixty-one, Stratton-Porter was one of the country s best-known authors, with a following of fifty million readers worldwide and with her novels and nature books selling hundreds of copies a day. Though never a favorite with literary critics, Stratton-Porter was beloved by ordinary Americans, as much for her storytelling skills and advocacy for wildlife as for her independent spirit. Often clad in manly clothes and toting a gun for protection as she trooped through swamps and forests, Stratton-Porter lived life on her own terms and, in the process, helped push back society s boundaries for women.
Written by Barbara Olenyik Morrow, Nature's The Life of Gene Stratton-Porter, is the seventh volume in the Indiana Historical Society Press s youth biography series. The book examines Stratton-Porter s early life exploring the treacherous Limberlost Swamp in northeastern Indiana to her development as an enormously popular writer. Stratton-Porter used her popularity to campaign for conservation, and some claimed she was as influential as President Theodore Roosevelt in igniting public interest in wildlife causes. Prominent scholar and critic William Lyon Phelps observed that Stratton-Porter led millions of boys and girls into the study of natural objects, and he even called her a public institution, like Yellowstone Park.
Stratton-Porter continued to advocate for wildlife after her move to California, where she became one of Hollywood s first female producers, turning her nature-themed novels into wholesome family movies. Upon her death from injuries in an automobile accident on December 6, 1924, she was widely mourned by fans of her many books, magazine columns, movies, and photography. She also was saluted by conservationists, grateful for her passionate pleas on behalf of the environment. In a tribute obituary, the Izaak Walton League, a national conservation organization, called on its members to carry on in the cause for which she worked and in which she believed with every atom of her heart and soul.
Written by Barbara Olenyik Morrow, Nature's The Life of Gene Stratton-Porter, is the seventh volume in the Indiana Historical Society Press s youth biography series. The book examines Stratton-Porter s early life exploring the treacherous Limberlost Swamp in northeastern Indiana to her development as an enormously popular writer. Stratton-Porter used her popularity to campaign for conservation, and some claimed she was as influential as President Theodore Roosevelt in igniting public interest in wildlife causes. Prominent scholar and critic William Lyon Phelps observed that Stratton-Porter led millions of boys and girls into the study of natural objects, and he even called her a public institution, like Yellowstone Park.
Stratton-Porter continued to advocate for wildlife after her move to California, where she became one of Hollywood s first female producers, turning her nature-themed novels into wholesome family movies. Upon her death from injuries in an automobile accident on December 6, 1924, she was widely mourned by fans of her many books, magazine columns, movies, and photography. She also was saluted by conservationists, grateful for her passionate pleas on behalf of the environment. In a tribute obituary, the Izaak Walton League, a national conservation organization, called on its members to carry on in the cause for which she worked and in which she believed with every atom of her heart and soul.
- GenresBiography
181 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 12, 2025
A perfect in-one-sitting-length biography, hitting all of the major points, including some amazing photographs! I learned so many interesting facts about GSP, like details about her movie producing! I feel ready to visit her Indiana home, and pity my husband who is now in for a lot of “Did You Knows.”
November 18, 2020
A recent trip to one of Gene Stratton Porter’s homes inspired me to pick up “Nature’s Storyteller: The Life of Gene Stratton Porter.”
Gene was born in 1863 near Lagro, Indiana — coincidentally, the location of Hanging Rock which I have written about earlier. She was the youngest of 12 children, and her mother died while she was a child. She then moved to the town of Wabash with her dad and some of her siblings who were still at home. She married and moved to Geneva, Indiana (where they built the house I visited last month). After becoming a famous author, she had another house (Wildflower Woods) built in Rome City, Indiana, and after that moved to California when many of her books were made into films.
Throughout the book, I found it interesting to look at dates. Gene and I are born quite close to 100 years apart, so when it would talk about what Gene was doing in 1918, I could easily put myself at her age by imagining what I’d done in 2018. Interestingly, Spanish flu hit in March 1918 and continued through June 1920. Our current Chinese flu hit almost 100 years later, around March 2020, and I sure hope it doesn’t continue as long as its Spanish version did. Gene did catch that “flu” but recovered.
I enjoyed getting to know more about Gene, although she carefully guarded her privacy. She was a very independent woman. Her husband realized this from the beginning and seemed okay with her building the Rome City house, for instance, which he only visited on weekends due to his job in Geneva. Gene wrote that in her community, she was “severely criticized on account of my ideas of housekeeping, dress, and social customs … I purposely kept everything I did as quiet as possible.”
Quitting high school just a month before graduation, she was a bad fit for the educational system. But few were as educated as Gene — she just learned things on her own and out in the field, literally in her case, since her interests were nature and animals. From childhood, she had a special bond with wild animals. As a child, “a blue jay became her pet, sitting on her shoulder as she worked and played. She named the bird Hezekiah and dressed it in pants, a coat, and a sunbonnet. She even taught it a trick — to roll cherries across the floor before eating them.” I can’t imagine this, since I can’t even get birds to stay at my feeder long enough to try taking a photo of them from inside the house.
As an adult, the lengths she went to to photograph wildlife were amazing. She crawled through poison ivy to photograph a peacock on its nest, and hauled a large mirror up into barn rafters to create the proper lighting for photographing a swallow’s nest in barn rafters.
Her books garnered harsh words from critics. But as you might expect, Gene didn’t care. To the critics saying her books were sentimental and idealized, she wrote “They are! And I glory in them! … The greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be a gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier man, it is a wonder-working book.”
“For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have met … an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is upon the lives of these people that I base what I write. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy.” Wow — that’s pretty much how I feel about being a conservative.
McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal magazines hired Gene to write uplifting monthly columns. I couldn’t help but think about how women’s magazines are today in comparison. Many haven’t even survived, but those that have are full of woke articles on gay couples and articles featuring liberal causes. I’ve thought before that I really was born in the wrong century. I would have fit in better in Gene’s day.
Was Gene a Christian? I would like to think so. “In the economy of Nature nothing is ever lost. I cannot believe that the soul of man shall prove the one exception,” she wrote. “I am not a member of any church, not because I do not believe in creeds and churches for the great majority of people, but because in my personal case I have the feeling that they are not necessary. I prefer to continue in the relationship I feel is established between me and my Creator through a lifetime of Nature study.”
Sadly, before her house in California could be finished, Gene was killed in a collision between her chauffeur-driven car and a streetcar. She was buried there, but in 1999 her remains were moved back to Indiana, where they were buried at her Wildflower Woods grounds. “Hers was ever an original way,” said her pastor at her funeral. “She did nothing after a prescribed fashion.”
This book was a quick, easy read, and was full of photos, which made it even more interesting. Highly recommended.
Gene was born in 1863 near Lagro, Indiana — coincidentally, the location of Hanging Rock which I have written about earlier. She was the youngest of 12 children, and her mother died while she was a child. She then moved to the town of Wabash with her dad and some of her siblings who were still at home. She married and moved to Geneva, Indiana (where they built the house I visited last month). After becoming a famous author, she had another house (Wildflower Woods) built in Rome City, Indiana, and after that moved to California when many of her books were made into films.
Throughout the book, I found it interesting to look at dates. Gene and I are born quite close to 100 years apart, so when it would talk about what Gene was doing in 1918, I could easily put myself at her age by imagining what I’d done in 2018. Interestingly, Spanish flu hit in March 1918 and continued through June 1920. Our current Chinese flu hit almost 100 years later, around March 2020, and I sure hope it doesn’t continue as long as its Spanish version did. Gene did catch that “flu” but recovered.
I enjoyed getting to know more about Gene, although she carefully guarded her privacy. She was a very independent woman. Her husband realized this from the beginning and seemed okay with her building the Rome City house, for instance, which he only visited on weekends due to his job in Geneva. Gene wrote that in her community, she was “severely criticized on account of my ideas of housekeeping, dress, and social customs … I purposely kept everything I did as quiet as possible.”
Quitting high school just a month before graduation, she was a bad fit for the educational system. But few were as educated as Gene — she just learned things on her own and out in the field, literally in her case, since her interests were nature and animals. From childhood, she had a special bond with wild animals. As a child, “a blue jay became her pet, sitting on her shoulder as she worked and played. She named the bird Hezekiah and dressed it in pants, a coat, and a sunbonnet. She even taught it a trick — to roll cherries across the floor before eating them.” I can’t imagine this, since I can’t even get birds to stay at my feeder long enough to try taking a photo of them from inside the house.
As an adult, the lengths she went to to photograph wildlife were amazing. She crawled through poison ivy to photograph a peacock on its nest, and hauled a large mirror up into barn rafters to create the proper lighting for photographing a swallow’s nest in barn rafters.
Her books garnered harsh words from critics. But as you might expect, Gene didn’t care. To the critics saying her books were sentimental and idealized, she wrote “They are! And I glory in them! … The greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be a gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier man, it is a wonder-working book.”
“For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have met … an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is upon the lives of these people that I base what I write. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy.” Wow — that’s pretty much how I feel about being a conservative.
McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal magazines hired Gene to write uplifting monthly columns. I couldn’t help but think about how women’s magazines are today in comparison. Many haven’t even survived, but those that have are full of woke articles on gay couples and articles featuring liberal causes. I’ve thought before that I really was born in the wrong century. I would have fit in better in Gene’s day.
Was Gene a Christian? I would like to think so. “In the economy of Nature nothing is ever lost. I cannot believe that the soul of man shall prove the one exception,” she wrote. “I am not a member of any church, not because I do not believe in creeds and churches for the great majority of people, but because in my personal case I have the feeling that they are not necessary. I prefer to continue in the relationship I feel is established between me and my Creator through a lifetime of Nature study.”
Sadly, before her house in California could be finished, Gene was killed in a collision between her chauffeur-driven car and a streetcar. She was buried there, but in 1999 her remains were moved back to Indiana, where they were buried at her Wildflower Woods grounds. “Hers was ever an original way,” said her pastor at her funeral. “She did nothing after a prescribed fashion.”
This book was a quick, easy read, and was full of photos, which made it even more interesting. Highly recommended.
September 9, 2016
This is an excellent little biography of my beloved Gene Stratton-Porter. I learned so much about the dynamic woman that she was. The book is full of photographs taken by GSP, quotes of GSP and her daughter, and many interesting facts about the life of GSP. Highly recommended to anyone who appreciates her books!
March 21, 2015
"Nature's Storyteller" by Barbara Morrow, author of several Hoosier biographies for a middle level audience, tells the story of Gene Stratton-Porter, Indiana's storyteller (the toll road service plaza near my home is named after her). Stratton-Porter was indefatigable in her devotion to studying, photographing, and preserving the world of nature: particularly birds, moths, and plants. Because the book relies strongly on quotations from Stratton-Porter's writings and her own photographs, it feels fresh and authentic. I had read two of her fiction books, criticized in her time for being too moralistic and sugary sweet; in fact, my father, a youngster during the 1920's, also read her books as a boy. But, I was unaware of her non-fiction scientific publications. Or, that she was a long-time columnist in popular women's magazines. Of course, I knew Stratton-Porter as the creator of the lovely lakeside cottage, now a state historic site, located 20 miles from my home. But I can hear her voice in this biography, as an opinionated child, as an exuberant adult naturalist, and as a wide-eyed transplant to California and film-making. The next time I visit the Cabin in Wildflower Woods, the flowers will smell a bit sweeter.
July 21, 2016
This book reveals an amazing woman who was way ahead of her time!
September 2, 2018
Because my mother grew up with Gene Stratton-Porter books I did too. It wasn't until recently I learned how
As part of our summer travels this year we planned to visit Wildflower Woods, the home GSP built in Rome, IN. I reread a GSP book (Freckles) and also read another for the first time (Girl of the Limberlost). We did indeed visit the cabin and it was wonderful and made me want to read more. A few of the books in the bookshop looked too academic for me, so I picked this up though it is probably designed for youth market. I enjoyed it. Learned some more, though many questions remain for me. (I'm always intrigued by women writers of that era that have no children or only one child, as she did. Was that a choice? Was it based on desire to be more than just a mother?)
This is one of those "somebody should write a book" situations that makes me think maybe the somebody is me.
As part of our summer travels this year we planned to visit Wildflower Woods, the home GSP built in Rome, IN. I reread a GSP book (Freckles) and also read another for the first time (Girl of the Limberlost). We did indeed visit the cabin and it was wonderful and made me want to read more. A few of the books in the bookshop looked too academic for me, so I picked this up though it is probably designed for youth market. I enjoyed it. Learned some more, though many questions remain for me. (I'm always intrigued by women writers of that era that have no children or only one child, as she did. Was that a choice? Was it based on desire to be more than just a mother?)
This is one of those "somebody should write a book" situations that makes me think maybe the somebody is me.
August 10, 2019
Gene Stratton Porter is one of the great novelists and nature writers. This is the story of her life growing up and about the nature books she has written as well as the novels she published. She was a strong woman who worked to preserve many places for future naturalists to study. Her novels are delightful - Laddie, Freckles, Michael O'Halloran, Girl of the Limberlost and many others. They can be found on Amazon free for Kindle ereading. Lost art of books without sex, violence and sin - these are precious reading.
October 30, 2020
Read this after visiting the Indiana site of her home at Rome City. She was a fascinating lady with many varied interests.
February 15, 2024
This contains interesting tidbits about Gene Stratton-Porter, but there is not a lot of detail here. You could probably learn as much or more about her via Wikipedia. Porter was one of my grandmother's favorite authors back in the day, and because of that, I read Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles years ago. I liked them but remember thinking they were very old-fashioned; that would probably add to their charm for me now. I didn't know much about the author other than she was a popular writer in the early twentieth century, a self-taught naturalist and photographer and conservationist advocate. This biography explains also that she became extremely wealthy due mostly to her fiction and it is impressive how hard she worked regarding her obsessions with the natural world, obsessed to the point of encouraging various insects to take up residence inside her house--yikes. In addition, I was surprised to learn she lived in Los Angeles later in life and was involved in the movie business while her novels were being filmed during the twenties (silent movie era). Her magazine articles at that time celebrated the fresh air and wildlife in southern California; she'd be completely shocked at what it's like now.
May 13, 2011
I read Stratton-Porter's "Girl of the Limberlost" about 8 years ago and really loved the natural setting and descriptions in the book. We have moved very close to the area where Gene Stratton-Porter was raised and lived much of her adult life. So it is neat to learn more about her life and work. I am looking forward to visit her homes near the Limberlost Swamp and near Rome City on Sylvan Lake. I really identify with Stratton-Porter and her love of the outdoors and all it's inhabitats. I look forward to reading many more of her books. This book give a great window to her life and passions. She is an inspiration to all women.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews