A Girl Of The Limberlost

Adapted from the book by Gene Stratton Porter, this "WonderWorks Family Movie" features an outstanding performance from Heather Fairfield as 15-year-old Elnora Comstock. As the story opens in rural Indiana, in the year 1908, Elnora has high hopes of attending the high school in town, even though her widowed mother Kate (Annette O'Toole) needs her on the struggling farm. Befriended by the writer/naturalist Gene Stratton Porter (Joanna Cassidy), Elnora collects butterflies, moths, and other insects from the Limberlost Swamp to sell to Mrs. Porter in order that she may purchase her textbooks for high school. When the timber company makes a bid for the Comstock farm, and is swiftly rejected, Elnora and Kate are pushed to the physical limit as they try to bring in the crop early to pay the raised property taxes. Hanging over the entire story is the death of Elnora's father, who disappeared in the swamp when Elnora was a baby--as tensions between mother and daughter escalate, the terrible truth emerges and the pair confront each other in a heartrending conclusion. From the environmental concerns of the timber clearing to the peer pressure Elnora feels as a country girl in a high school (one of her classmates cruelly changes her name on the blackboard from "Comstock" to "Cornstalk"), A Girl of the Limberlost, though set in another era, still speaks to young people today. Highly recommended. (Available from: Films Inc., 5547 N. Ravenswood Ave., Chicago, IL 60640-1199; 1-800-323-4222, ext. 43.)