"The Song of the Cardinal, Gene Stratton-Porter's first book, serves as a delightful introduction to the more than twenty others that she ultimately published along with numerous stories and articles in magazines. Stratton-Porter is one of the best-selling authors ever and her novels have never gone out of print. The fictional Cardinal that the book is about is actually a superbird who is bigger and redder and sings louder and more beautifully than any other Cardinal in the world. Moreover, it sings with such clarity that the literal meaning of its songs can be interpreted by human beings, primarily an old farmer and his wife who own the farm on which this bird resides. The Song of the Cardinal seems to be aimed at adults although its tone and intellectual level is more like that of a child's book. According to the film "Voice of Limberlost" it is based on a true experience in which the author finds a dead Cardinal "shot by some fiend with a gun simply to test his aim." She picked up the bird and carried it home, formulating the story along the way. The book reveals the strength of her feelings toward nature and invokes religion as the main source of moral authority. The book is clearly intended to influence the behavior and attitudes of hunters and marksmen toward wild things, especially birds, and to invoke the fear of God into any reader who would willingly harm them. The strengths of this book are that nature is presented in an endearing way that might sensitize people on an emotional level to the need to preserve it. It calls attention to the moral dimensions of man's impact on nature.
About the Author: Gene Stratton-Porter (1863 -1924) was an American author, amateur naturalist, wildlife photographer, and one of the earliest women to form a movie studio and production company. She wrote some best-selling novels and well-received columns in national magazines, such as McCalls. Her works were translated into several languages, including Braille, and Stratton-Porter was estimated to have 50 million readers around the world. She used her position and income as a well-known author to support conservation of Limberlost Swamp and other wetlands in the state of Indiana. Her novel A Girl of the Limberlost was adapted four times as a film, most recently in 1990 in a made-for-TV version.