This is a review of the "The Complete Story", an omnibus of the 3 Free books published in the early 1960s, about Elsa the Lion and her cubs. I have fond emotional memories of the movie and/or TV series in the 1970s but the details are hazy, so wanted to revisit. It's very interesting on a number of levels. Of course a great love story between humans and intelligent animal. Elsa herself is epic, she straddled the world as both wild lion and tame. If Elsa was truly free or not is debatable, she was groomed by the Adamsons. Whatever the case, both lion and people found the relationship mutually rewarding for different reasons and it worked, until it didn't. That may be the lesson, wild animals can't live in both worlds at once and remain safe. I found Joy's writing to be evocative of the place and time and transportive to an outdoor life in Africa. It was an influential book for its time, turning many people into animal rights activists when such a thing was still fairly new. Jane Goodall a few years later surfed this wave with her monumental first book about the Gombe Stream chimpanzees. One thing almost entirely lacking from Free, which could have propelled it to greatness, is a sense of who Joy and George Adamson are. They are entirely focused and devoted to Elsa and cubs, I wanted to know more but they remain distant, except in their relationship to the lions. ( )

I read this as a teen and loved it.This was a classic and still is. If you love nature and animals,this is a must read. ( )