Abel, a young man of wealth, fails at a revolution and flees Caracas into the uncharted forests of Guayana.

Abel awakens in the hut of Nuflo, an old man who protects his "granddaughter" Rima, and won't reveal her origin.

Abel pays a last visit to the Indians, but they capture him as a prisoner, suspecting that he is a spy for an enemy tribe or consorts with demons.

Abel, exhausted, is again taken prisoner, but isn't killed, as he quickly makes a vow to go to war against the enemy tribe.

Trekking homeward, despondent and hallucinating, Abel is helped by Indians and Christians until he reaches the sea, sane and healthy again.

Reflecting back, he believes neither God nor man can forgive his sins, but that gentle Rima would, provided he has forgiven himself.

[2] Temple paintings often showed light-skinned people, and Spanish Conquistadors were purportedly thought to be gods.

Green Mansions also features some cryptozoological concepts such as Curupita (Curupira) and Didi purportedly representing giant apes unknown by science.

Hudson's book has endured as literature because of its evocative and lyrical prose, and his naturalist's keen vision of the jungle.

In the Classics Illustrated comic book adaptation, the editor says, "We also feel that Hudson wants to tell us in this story that, long before this present meat-eating and destructive race took over all the world, there was a race of beings on the earth – beautiful, innocent, and bird-like, who lived in peace with nature and themselves, and of whom Rima and her mother were the last".

In 1951, The Gilberton Co. released a comic book adaptation of Green Mansions as issue number 90 in their Classics Illustrated series.

In 1959, the book was adapted into a movie, also entitled Green Mansions, starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima, with Anthony Perkins as Abel.

The film, which was directed by Hepburn's husband, Mel Ferrer, was a critical and box office failure.

Rima the Jungle Girl returned to the DC Universe in a new pulp-era comic debuting in 2010 entitled First Wave.

Rima was portrayed as a South American native with piercings and tattoos, who didn't speak, but communicated in bird-like whistles.

Plying a big knife and a panther, she helped Doc Savage's assistant Johnny Littlejohn, then disappeared back into the forest.

In her 1973 story The Girl Who Was Plugged In, James Tiptree Jr.'s character Paul Isham III finds inspiration from the novel to abduct and rescue a beautiful but ill-fated young girl named Delphi—unbeknownst to him, an advertising puppet operated by a deformed pilot—whom Isham identifies with Rima.