LibriVox recording of Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest, by W.H. Hudson. Read by Mark F. Smith.
"Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest" is a narration of his life story by Abel, a Venezuelan, to a comrade. Once a wealthy young man, he meddled in politics to the extent of provoking a revolution... which failed.
Escaping into the tropical forests of Guyana Abel takes up gold hunting, then journal-writing, and fails at both. Now with no aim for his life, he drifts until he takes up residence with a remote Indian tribe. Soon he learns of a wood the Indians avoid, as it is inhabited by a dangerous Daughter of the Didi, who, they say, slew one of them with magic. The fellow was in fact hit with a poisoned dart by accident, but his dying belief that she had caught the dart and hurled it at him survived him.
Intrigued, Abel visits the wood repeatedly, and eventually encounters Rima. She indeed is something magical. She seems to have a pact with nature: animals don't molest her, she speaks in a melodious birdsong (as well as Spanish), and she even makes her garments of spider silk. When Abel is bitten by a venomous snake that acts protective of her, she and her "grandfather" Nuflo nurse Abel back to health.
Both Abel and Rima are wonderments to each other, someone unlike any other person they have ever encountered. They fall in love, a love that is stymied by Rima's inability to understand the feelings Abel creates in her. On a long trek to discover Rima's origins, they find that her unique people no longer exist, but they finally confront the magnetism that is drawing them together. Finally they find joy, and make plans... until Rima is murdered by the Indians.
And then it is time for vengeance! (Summary by Mark F. Smith)
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