Green Mansions

"WHH's most famous bird novel is Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904). Structured as the confession-in-tranquillity of an old man named Abel, it takes place in the middle of the 19th century somewhere between Venezuela and Guyana, where young Abel has fled after a political debacle. Here he finds a tribe of Indians which lives in fear of the "demons" who inhabit a nearby region; but what Abel discovers there is a tiny woman called Rima, who seems and sounds half-bird, who can talk with animals, and who longs to return to her home, which is a kind of lost world (see Lost Races) in the mountains. When they get there, it has been destroyed. She returns to her home woods and is burnt alive in a great Tree by the Indians, who are then massacred at Abel's instigation. Quite extraordinarily attenuated in comparison with earlier figures – like {{A|H Rider Haggard}}'s Ayesha – Rima nevertheless very fairly represents WHH's notion of the impossibility of harmony between humans and the natural world." (underscore represents linked cross-reference) --SFE: Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), biographical entry by John Clute