Ross Lockridge: Raintree County

The legend of the Raintree is the age-old tale of man's quest for the unattainable. In every time and every language, poets have sung of it, the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden... Apollo's tree bearing golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides... the Golden Raintree of the Orient, mysteriously transplanted to the heart of frontier America. It is a tree whose fruit is love, whose flower is self fulfillment, whose ways are ways of pleasantness and whose paths all lead to peace. Luck, happiness, the realization of dreams, the secret of Life itself, all Belorg to him who finds the Raintree.