The Yearling

From November of 2011:

I just spent about six hours with The Yearling and I could happily turn to page one and spend another six hours.

Jody is a young boy, a yearling himself, if you will, who lives with his mother and father in the wilds of Florida in the early 1900's. His mother and father are a little out-of-place in this world, both older people who finally had Jody after many miscarriages and the loss of many babies who died in infancy. Jody's mother has become hardened by the losses but Jody's father is crazy about his son and tries to teach the boy everything he needs to know. Jody lives a very different life than most children today. He doesn't go to school and suffers with his parents from the whims of living in poverty in desperate times. Jody is thrilled to come upon a motherless yearling deer and to be given reluctant permission from his parents to raise the deer.

Like the story of Old Yeller, the ending of this book is widely known, so I don't think I'll be giving away much if I say that the painful but beautiful ending of the story is not even the wisest part of this book.