Audiobook · read by volunteers
Michael O'Halloran
Gene Stratton-Porter (1863–1924)
Read by Mary Anderson · 20 chapters · 14 h 27
About the book
Michael O'Halloran is a newsboy with nothing but his wits, his cheerful nerve and a simple rule for living: be square. Orphaned young, he sells papers on the streets of a big city and asks very little of the world. Yet wherever he goes he leaves things a little brighter, from the lonely and the sick to the crotchety and the proud. Along the way he crosses the paths of people from every corner of the city, who are about to find out how much one small, stubborn optimist can change. Gene Stratton-Porter wrote warm, sunny fiction with a clear moral centre, and this novel is a good example of her gift. Mary Anderson reads all twenty chapters, about fourteen and a half hours of gentle, uplifting storytelling.
Introduction
Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924) was an American novelist, naturalist and photographer who grew up in Indiana and became one of the most widely read authors of her day. Her books, among them Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost, combined romance and plain moral purpose with a deep love of the natural world, and they sold in huge numbers in the early twentieth century.
Michael O'Halloran appeared in 1915. It belongs to the tradition of cheerful stories about plucky young people who triumph over hardship through character and kindness, a tradition that was extremely popular at the time. The hero is a newsboy whose motto is to be square, and the book keeps returning to the idea that goodwill is contagious. Readers who prefer realism may find it sentimental, but it is written with conviction, and it offers a vivid picture of city life and of the hopes of ordinary people in the years before the First World War.
The recording consists of twenty chapters and lasts about fourteen and a half hours. It is read throughout by one LibriVox volunteer, Mary Anderson, whose warm delivery suits the book's tone. It makes easy and comforting listening, the kind of story to keep you company during a long walk or a quiet evening, and a pleasant reminder of why this author found such a large and loyal audience. Its gentle humour, its cast of neighbours and strangers, and its steady belief in decency make it a pleasant companion for anyone who enjoys the old-fashioned American novel at its warmest.
Public domain
Gene Stratton-Porter died in 1924: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text