This book is rich with loving descriptions of the Limberlost swamp, its old-growth forest, its birds and flowers and other wildlife, and of a young man falling in love with it. Very much worth listening to on that account.

On the other hand, the other side of this book is a sort of tired Horatio Alger story about an orphan rising in the world by being such a very good person (who is never ever misjudged by others, just so long as they are very good people like himself and also rich.) I think it will be more "fair warning" than "spoiler" if I inform you that he turns out to be the long-lost nephew of rich foreign aristocrats.

Still, it's the (mostly ignored) connection between these two sides of the book that is most infuriating. Freckles' rich and wonderful boss is a timber man, there to log the Limberlost. He's in the logging business *because he loves the woods* (and cutting them down gives him a socially acceptable reason to hang out in them.) By the end of the book, now-rich Freckles is looking forward to going into the business with him. By the way, the Limberlost is now pretty much gone, and at one point in the book a comment was made anticipating this future fact--and promptly forgotten. I want to shake these people and yell "You and your dangfool nineteenth-century attitudes are why we can't have nice ecosystems anymore!"

On the other hand, this is simply what you can expect from a nineteenth-century book, and the descriptions are amazing & there's lots to learn. So, four stars, listen to it, I just wanted to give you fair warning.

There went my day!