The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: The Rediscovered Diary of Opal Whiteley - Hardcover

Whiteley, Opal Stanley; Hoff, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0899194443 ISBN 13: 9780899194448

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1986

Synopsis

Book by Whiteley, Opal Stanley, Hoff, Benjamin

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1920, when the Atlantic Monthly Press published the childhood diary of Opal Whiteley (The Story of Opal, it became an immediate bestseller, acclaimed for the extraordinary expression of a child's view of nature, life and family in her native Oregon. The view is joyfully pantheistic and anthropomorphic: the fields are a fairy land; the woods harbor a fir tree named Byron; a pig answers to Peter Paul Rubens; a young wife is "Dear Love"; "angel parents" take care of Opal, who purports to be adopted. Childish spellings mingle with sophisticated foreign phrases. A year later the diary was declared a hoax, a fantasy, by the press, which deemed the book an adult-child collaboration. Opal, buffeted by ill fortune, retreated further into a fantasy world. Diagnosed a schizophrenic, she is today in a hospital outside London, where Hoff, having rediscovered the diary, attempted unsuccessfully to interview her. Interjecting his frustration, he nevertheless succeeds in bringing about an understanding, 65 years later, of a tragically gifted child. Hoff is the author of The Tao of Pooh.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0899194443
• ISBN 13: 9780899194448
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 367