Come into the forest with Calpurnia, a little girl who loves to make poems. Her dog Buggy-horse is with her, for he goes wherever she does.

It is a sunny day as Calpurnia starts out. Hard times have come to the forest, and her father has no fish to sell. She must find a place where there are fish...

So we go with her as she finds her secret river, and come back with her when it is all moonlight and mystery in the forest and:

The little night things
Have songs and wings.

In time of need Calpurnia has found her secret river. Can she find it again? Where is this secret river? And do we all have secret rivers of our own?

This story means something to everyone who reads it, and to everyone who has imagination.

When she died, The Secret River was found among her papers. Julia Scribner Bigham, her literary executor, tells about it in her preface to the book.

This is the only story that MARJORIE RAWLINGS wrote directly for children. Her letters show that she wanted the story to stand as a conception of the universal child and of the imagination of childhood.

From the dust jacket