In The Harvester, Gene Stratton-Porter returns to her beloved midwestern woodlands. Her hero David Langston is modeled after Henry David Thoreau. He lives a contented life in Medicine Woods with his dog Belshazzar, his horse Betsy, and the birds and animals the wild as companions. To the residents of the nearby town of Onabasha, Langston is known as the Medicine Man. He spends his life studying and cultivating plants and herbs which he sells to the local hospital or which he concocts into healthful tonics and medicines. One day histranquility is disturbed by a vision of a woman "wonderful, alluring, lovely beyond any woman the harvester ever had seen." This apparition sends Langston in search of his dream girl. He soon finds and rescues the pale and lovely Ruth Jameson. She is his dream come to life. They go off to live in the cabin he has lovingly built for her. Ultimately they find idyllic bliss in the pure, unspoiled woods, but not before the dream girl's mysterious past is revealed and resolved.