The Strike at Shane's

- The lost novella of naturalist and best-selling romantic novelist, GENE STRATTON-PORTER. - 'Her narrative is entertaining, her enthusiasm catching, and her revelations so stimulating' NEW YORK TIMES. - 'One of the small group of writers whose success, both in England and in America, was enormous... It is rare indeed for a writer to appeal, as she did, both to experienced readers equipped with standards of literary taste and to the most unsophisticated, who live apart from the world of books' THE TIMES. The Shane family farm, nestling in the American mid-western state of Indiana is not a happy place. Turn-of-the-century life is hard and frugal for John and Mary and their son Tom, and forward-looking daughter, Edith. Is there a price to be paid for the mistreatment by John and Tom of the farm's animals and wildlife during the critical planting season? ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gene Stratton-Porter was as famous an author in the 1900s as J. K. Rowling is today, publishing five million-selling books before she died tragically in a car accident in 1924. She wrote twenty-six books including twelve novels and eight nature studies and is best remembered for her romantic novels FRECKLES (1904), A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST ('Eminent' NEW YORK TIMES), and THE HARVESTER (number one on the best-seller list in 1912). Her novels were adapted for the silver screen - some many times over - and translated into over twenty languages bringing her worldwide recognition. Born Geneva Grace Stratton, on a farm in Wabash County, Indiana, in 1863, the youngest of twelve children, she described her childhood as one 'lived out-of-doors with the wild.' Many of her books have a strong environmental message, and long before the campaigning organisations we know today, Stratton-Porter was a strong advocate of the wilderness lands in her native state of Indiana, campaigning to preserve the Limberlost swamp and wetland from commercial exploitation.