The singing creek where the willows grow: the mystical nature diary of opal whiteley - opal whiteley

Capturing Americas heart in 1920, Opals childhood diary became an immediate bestseller.

Innocent and intimate, this haunting diary reveals the life of a kind of feminine Peter Pan in the Oregon wilderness.

Rediscovered and proven authentic by the bestselling author of The Tao of Pooh, it is now accompanied by a biography and afterword.

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Long before environmental consciousness became popular, a young nature writer named Opal Whitely captured Americas heart.

Opals childhood diary, published in 1902, became an immediate bestseller, one of the most talked-about books of its time.

Wistful, funny, and wise, it was described by an admirer as the revelation of the .

life of a feminine Peter Pan of the Oregon wilderness--so innocent, so intimate, so haunting, that I should not know where in all literature to look for a counterpart.

But the diary soon fell into disgrace.

Condemning it as an adult-written hoax, skeptics stirred a scandal that drove the book into obscurity and shattered the frail spirit of its author.

Discovering the diary by chance, bestselling author Benjamin Hoff set out to solve the longstanding mystery of its origin.

His biography of Opal that accompanies the diary provides fascinating proof that the document is indeed authentic--the work of a magically gifted child, Americas forgotten interpreter of nature.