Gloria Whelan 
Clearing in the Forest 

An elderly woman and a young boy team up to save the countryside Old Frances Crawford is looking for wild mushrooms when she hears the gunshot. A few minutes later, the teenage hunter blunders into her clearing, two dead rabbits over his shoulder. As an apology for hunting on her land, Wilson offers her one of the rabbits, and Frances is happy to take it. She hasn’t been able to afford meat for some time. He is handing it over when she falls at his feet in a dead faint. Wilson carries Frances home and the two get to talking—about fossils, about the woods, about the best way to cook rabbit with wild mushrooms. Soon this tough old lady is teaching Wilson everything she knows about the forests of Northern Michigan. When an oil company threatens to destroy the natural landscape, these unlikely friends will work to save the woods that brought them together.