THE KENTUCKY WARBLER.

Garden City: Doubleday Page Book. Very Good. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 1918, 195pp, color frontispiece. Very light wear, else VG+. BAL 486. A coming of age story involving a teenage boy, with no goals and no direction in life until he hears a lecture at school about the Scottish naturalist, Alexander Wilson, who lived about a hundred years before. As a young man, Wilson had also been aimless and restless. He was forced to take an apprenticeship as a weaver, a job which he hated; and, at the age of eighteen, struck out on his own, eventually coming to America and pursuing his true passion, ornithology. He discovered a new species of bird and named it the Kentucky Warbler, for the state where he first saw it. It is not a particularly rare species, but hard to find, and becomes a metaphor for the unknown life that lies ahead of the young man as he enters adulthood. We know he has reached a new level of maturity when he takes to the woods on his own, trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive bird, deciding to work his way through school, and learning to ignore his sister's constant taunts and aggravations..