At the Foot of the Rainbow

A short novel of friendship and marriage among farmers and trappers on the Wabash in Indiana, turning on jealousy between two lifelong friends and on the land and water the author knew in professional detail. Stratton-Porter’s fiction was enormously popular in its day and is unfashionable now; its interest in a formation curriculum is the attention it pays to a specific American place — a wetland that was being drained as she wrote about it — and to work done outdoors.

Context: Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924) was a novelist, nature photographer and conservationist whose Limberlost books funded her fieldwork. At the Foot of the Rainbow was published in 1907.

Connections

• A Library to Build Great Americans — the 468-title curriculum this card came from; listed in the Ages 13-99+ band under Fiction.
• Gene Stratton-Porter — the author.
• Family — the relationships the story turns on.