The Harvester
1911
The Harvester is a man who has made peace with solitude. David Langston lives alone in a cabin deep in the Indiana woods, devoting his days to harvesting medicinal plants and his nights to quiet conversation with his faithful dog, Belshazzar. He is content, if lonely, and has begun to wonder if there might be more to life than the gentle rhythms of the forest. Then he dreams of a woman, specific and vivid, and begins preparing his home and heart for her arrival. When Ruth appears, she is everything he imagined and more, but she carries a shadowed past that threatens their fragile happiness. What follows is a story of love earned through patience and truth, set against the wild beauty of the Midwest that Stratton-Porter knew and loved. The novel pulses with an almost devotional reverence for nature, for simplicity, for the kind of love that asks everything of you and gives everything in return. It is a romance wrapped in moss and sunlight, dated in its idealism but startling in its emotional directness.
Editions
X-Ray
“If anyone had asked him that morning concerning his idea of Heaven, he never would have dreamed of describing a place of gold-paved streets, crystal pillars, jewelled gates, and thrones of ivory. These things were beyond the man's comprehension and he would not have admired or felt at home in such magnificence if it had been materialized for him. He would have told you that a floor of last year's brown leaves, studded with myriad flower faces, big, bark-encased pillars of a thousand years, jewels on every bush, shrub, and tree, and tilting thrones on which gaudy birds almost burst themselves to voice the joy of life, while their bright-eyed little mates peered questioningly at him over nest rims”
— Gene Stratton-Porter
“From an outside viewpoint it seems as if I had almost all a man could ask in reason. But when was a strong man in the grip of love ever reasonable? I think the Almighty took a pretty grave responsibility when He made men as He did. If I had been He, and understood the forces I was handling, I would have been too big a coward to do it.””
— Gene Stratton-Porter
“The next time any of you are called upon to address a body of men tell them to learn for themselves and to teach their sons, and to hold them at the critical hour, even by sweat and blood, to a clean life; for in this way only can feeble-minded homes, almshouses, and the scarlet woman be abolished. In this way only can men arise to full physical and mental force, and become the fathers of a race to whom the struggle for clean manhood will not be the battle it is with us.””
— Gene Stratton-Porter
“From there on, for a few years, she held me, not because I was man enough to stand, but because she was woman enough to support me””
— Gene Stratton-Porter
“Knowing things will not harm you. Doing them is a different matter. What you know will be a protection. What you do ruins - if it is wrong.””
— Gene Stratton-Porter
