The author, who was Guest of Honor at the Deep South Con in Knoxville in 1969, told us that it came to her as music, and that she was compelled to write it - she said that if she had not had a typewriter, she would have scratched it on one rock with another. And that the original manuscript was about twice the size of the published text - she cut it herself because the publisher insisted. I have read the book four times - it is very like good music, in that while the sequence is logical, a description of the events would be useless. There are no monsters or villains, and the only supernatural element is access to the Green Kingdom itself. There is no "utopia" in the politico-economic sense, and the small cast of characters have little interest in politics.