Cross Creek

by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Edward Shenton (Illustrator)

Cross Creek is the warm and delightful memoir about the life of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings—author of The Yearling —in the Florida backcountry.

Originally published in 1942, Cross Creek has become a classic in modern American literature. For the millions of readers raised on The Yearling, here is the story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's experiences in the remote Florida hamlet of Cross Creek, where she lived for thirteen years. From the daily labors of managing a seventy-two-acre orange grove to bouts with runaway pigs and a succession of unruly farmhands, Rawlings describes her life at the Creek with humor and spirit. Her tireless determination to overcome the challenges of her adopted home in the Florida backcountry, her deep-rooted love of the earth, and her genius for character and description result in a most delightful and heartwarming memoir.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Classics, Book Club, Biography, Nature, History

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

People know American writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings for her novel The Yearling (1938).

This author lived in rural Florida with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same title, The Yearling. The book was written long before the concept of young-adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.

Reviews

[Bobby Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cross Creek is one of the finest memoirs ever written, filled with grace and beauty from one of America's greatest writers, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Perhaps no other writer has so perfectly and honestly captured a place and time like Rawlings did in Cross Creek. It will transport you to that small acreage of backwoods Florida and cause you to wish for a life such as this.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings purchased a seventy-two acre orange grove in this remote area and fled her aristocratic life in the city to perfect her craft and get published. It is here that all her beloved books would be written, including this memoir covering the years of hardships and beauty at Cross Creek. Rawlings was in many ways reborn in Cross Creek, and she would leave behind literary achievements such as "South Moon Under," "Golden Apples," "When the Whippoorwill," "Cross Creek Cookery," and of course, her Pulitzer winning, "The Yearling."

Her close relationships with her neighbors at the creek, both black and white, are told with humor and humanity. Their lives were often filled with hardships but serenity as well, for all of them had chosen to live this kind of life rather than conform to society. Especially poignant are Rawlings' observations of a young destitute couple who would later be portrayed so movingly in Jacob's Ladder.

Rawlings' recollections of her friendships with Moe and his daughter Mary, who was Moe's reason for living, and the only one in his family who cared whether he came or went, are told with such beauty that we feel pain ourselves when he takes his last breath at the creek. Rawlings' deep friendships over the years with Tom and Old Martha are told with humor, honesty and a gift for description few have ever captured on paper.

Tinged with sadness is Marjorie's relationship both as employer and friend to 'Geechee. Rawlings would attempt to help her, but to no avail, as this sweet personality slowly became an unemployable alcoholic. Her mistreatment at the hands of a womanizer unworthy of her love was at the heart of her problem. It is perhaps also at the bottom of some bitter comments from Rawlings.

But Cross Creek is about the earth and our relationship to it. Rawlings came to believe over time that when we lose our connection to the earth, we lose a part of ourselves. The great and wondrous beauty of nature, from magnolia blossoms and rare herbs to Hayden mangos and papaya, are as much a part of this memoir as the people. Particularly hilarious are this gifted writer's descriptions of a pet raccoon of such mischievous nature and cantankerous disposition that it almost seems human.

Rawlings' world at the creek is perhaps her legacy, a gift given to the reader we can never forget. In order to enjoy this memoir, however, one must take into consideration a number of factors. Published in 1942 and covering many years prior in a backwoods area of Florida, this was a time when racial equality was a distant dream. Some may be offended by Rawlings' casual - though never mean spirited - observations.

Rawlings honestly relates actual conversations from this time and place between blacks and whites, and blacks to other blacks. While Rawlings herself treated everyone fairly, a long string of farmhands prone to drink and violence - including the man who would destroy her friend and employee 'Geechee - prompted Rawlings to lump an entire race into one group, her friends at the creek being rare exceptions. I do not feel this caveat should keep anyone from reading this most beautiful and heartwarming of memoirs, as this is an unflinchingly honest look at a time and a place, as well as attitudes - warts and all.

Rawlings' graceful prose, whether describing a chorus of frogs singing at night as a Brahms waltz, the scent of hibiscus drifting through the air at dusk or myriad of dishes meticulously prepared and labored over for hours, is delightful and unforgettable. Cross Creek will make you hungry for succulent fruits, cornbread and hot biscuits with wild plum jelly, and the living of life itself.

Reading this lovingly written memoir will leave you with a wistful desire to walk away from society as Rawlings did, and live the life we crave in our very being, even if that life can only be lived in our hearts.

"Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time."
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
(1896-1953)

[Tim Null · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to read a story of a perilous river trip in a canoe, then read chapter 22 of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Cross Creek book. The chapter is titled "22. Hyacinth drift". Rawlings and a dear friend survived by shear luck.

Cross Creek tells of Rawlings Florida life in the 1930s.

Back in the day I was a big Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings fan and I still have a bookshelf at home dedicated to books either about her or written by her.

Note: I was introduced to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings by the 1983 movie Cross Creek. The movie also introduced me to Mary Steenburgen, Rip Torn, Peter Coyote, and Alfre Woodard. I didn't see the movie in a theater, so I'm guessing I saw it in 1984 on TV. So the middle to late 1980s was when I was a big Rawlings fan. In the late 1970s I was an Ellen Glasgow fan, but that's a story unto itself.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cross Creek, Florida, is a real place, with a zip code of 32640; but don’t be surprised if you meet readers who truly believe that Cross Creek is strictly a literary construct, like William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. The vividness with which author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings brings the place to life in her 1942 autobiographical memoir Cross Creek is so complete that one might be forgiven for believing that the area only existed in the mind of a talented author with an extraordinary gift for conveying a sense of place.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s life was associated with many different places – D.C., Wisconsin, Kentucky, New York, Maryland – but when she relocated to an unincorporated community called Cross Creek in northern Florida, she found the patch of ground with which her life and writing would be forever associated. Her close observation of the north Florida landscape and culture nourished literary works like her debut novel, South Moon Under (1937). She is probably best-known for her 1939 novel The Yearling; that tale of a young boy and the orphaned fawn he adopted was the best-selling novel of its time, and was later adapted into an Oscar-winning 1946 film that starred a young Gregory Peck.

Having achieved such success in bringing Cross Creek to the attention of the world, Rawlings in her book Cross Creek set out to convey her sense of her community within the genre context of what we today might call creative nonfiction. From its beginnings, Cross Creek sets forth a vivid sense of the north Florida landscape, in the same manner that drew readers to South Moon Under and The Yearling, as Rawlings writes that “Cross Creek is a bend in a country road by land, and the flowing of Lochloosa Lake into Orange Lake, by water” (p. 1). And, as in her novels, Rawlings links what is unique about the people with what is unique about the landscape, writing archly that “Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here” (p. 1).

The 1930’s and 1940’s were a heyday for Southern U.S. literature; it was a time when writers like William Faulkner and Ellen Glasgow and Thomas Wolfe were publishing prize-winning and sometimes best-selling work. It was also a time when the American South was widely described as having a “sense of place” that was thought to be lacking in other regions of the United States. Accordingly, Southern readers might have been particularly apt to respond positively to Rawlings’s statement, early in Cross Creek, that “We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man’s heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men” (p. 2), or to her suggestion that the pine trees and the gall-berry bushes and the jorees “were on earth before us, and will survive after us, and it is given to us to join ourselves with them and to be comforted” (p. 4).

Rawlings combines her appreciation for the Florida landscape with a mellifluous writing style in descriptive passages like this one:

Enchantment lies in different things for each of us. For me, it is in this: to step out of the bright sunlight into the shade of orange trees; to walk under the arched canopy of their jade-like leaves; to see the long aisles of lichened trunks stretch ahead in a geometric rhythm; to feel the mystery of a seclusion that yet has shafts of light striking through it. This is the essence of an ancient and secret magic. It goes back, perhaps, to the fairy tales of childhood, to Hansel and Gretel, to Babes in the Wood, to Alice in Wonderland, to all half-luminous places that pleased the imagination as a child. It may go back still further, to racial Druid memories, to an atavistic sense of safety and delight in an open forest. And after long years of spiritual homelessness, of nostalgia, here is that mystic loveliness of childhood again. Here is home. An old thread, long tangled, comes straight again. (p. 5)

It sometimes happens that a person from one place finds their home in another place – as seems to have happened when Rawlings, a person with no Florida roots whatsoever, found her way to little Cross Creek, a settlement of seven families, five white and two African American. She writes of her arrival at the place where she found her voice as a writer that “When I came to the Creek, and knew the old grove and farmhouse at once as home, there was some terror, such as one feels in the first recognition of a human love – for the joining of person to place, as of person to person, is a commitment to shared sorrow, even as to shared joy” (p. 6).

It is not as if her transition to Florida life was easy; relatives in Maryland expressed alarm at her plans to farm in the Sunshine State, and Rawlings writes of those times that “It is more important to live the life one wishes to live, and to go down with it if necessary, quite contentedly, than to live more profitably but less happily” (p. 13).

Nevertheless, she persisted; and her appreciation for the Florida landscape where she made her home is palpable. Of the open Florida hammock that she described so vividly in South Moon Under and The Yearling, she writes, “I do not understand how any one can live without some small piece of enchantment to turn to”, and adds that “It is impossible to be among the woods animals on their own ground without a feeling of expanding one’s own world, as when any foreign country is visited” (p. 27).

Every aspect of Florida life seems poetic to Rawlings. Of the small, inch-long frogs that one sees so often throughout the state, she writes that “Their eyes are tiny moonstones”, and that “If frogs an inch long have never been carved in apple-green jade, they should be.” For good manner, she says of the frogs’ night-time song that, “just as I have wept over the Brahms waltz in A-flat on a master’s violin, I thought my heart would break with the beauty of it” (p. 107).

Taking the reader through the cycle of the seasons, Rawlings writes of bees in the long humid Florida summertime that “They work leisurely, dipping into the long heavy sprays of the palmetto bloom, stabbing carelessly the pink tarflowers, the gallberries, the andromeda, and what may be left over of flowers in the garden. They know there will be long months of sweetness and there is no longer any hurry” (p. 201). In wintertime, orange farms like Rawlings’s must light fatwood fires to keep the oranges in the groves from being ruined by a freeze; and of that spectacle, Rawlings writes that “I have seen no more beautiful thing in my life….It is doubly beautiful for the danger and the struggle, like a beloved friend for whose life one battles, drinking in the well known features that may be taken away forever” (p. 251).

Throughout Cross Creek, Rawlings connects her affinity for the Florida landscape with her feelings about life itself: “It was important only to keep close enough to the pulse to feel its rhythm, to be comforted by its steadiness, to know that Life is vital, and one’s own minute living a torn fragment of the larger cloth” (p. 28).

Writers who are interested in hearing about how other authors have transmuted their own life experiences and observations into literary fiction may benefit from reading passages like the one where Rawlings talks about a family that squatted for a time in a vacant tenant cabin on her land. The woman’s “fierce pride” impressed Rawlings so much that “The woman came to me in my dreams and tormented me”, to the point that “The only way I could shake myself free of her was to write of her” (p. 50), as she eventually did in two separate novels.

One of the most challenging aspects of reading Cross Creek involves dealing with the author’s seemingly contradictory attitudes with regard to race. On the one hand, Rawlings seems to have believed in the existence of some sort of racial hierarchy; on the other hand, she befriended prominent African Americans of Florida, such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Zora Neale Hurston, and invited Hurston to stay at her home, in violation of the strict segregationist laws and norms of that place and time. She does emphasize the individuality of the African Americans about whom she writes, as when she describes Martha, who worked as a domestic servant in Rawlings’s home. Rawlings emphasizes Martha’s quiet, undeniable power within the household, stating that “I can see Martha behind the scenes, managing, manipulating”, and adding that “Martha will have a finger in my pie from beyond the grave” (p. 151).

In Rawlings’s own time, some of her Cross Creek neighbors did not like one bit the way they were depicted in books like Cross Creek. Outside that village, by contrast, Floridians have always appreciated the loving care with which Rawlings wrote about their state; today, the house where she lived and wrote is a state park in the Alachua County town of Hawthorne. While some aspects of her writing – particularly, her attitudes regarding race – might not stand up well to modern scrutiny, her gift for descriptive writing and her sense of landscape still come through well, as will be evident to any reader of Cross Creek.

[Karen J · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I absolutely loved everything about this incredible memoir!

[Moonkiszt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marjorie Keenan Rawlings wrote a number of books, and the one that probably comes to mind first is The Yearling, which many of us read as children. It is beloved or not, depending on the damage done to a tender reader’s sensibilities. But that’s just the thing, Marjorie wasn’t being cruel. She was being real – real in her time, place and circumstance. Nature keeps it simple with strict consequences, bleak predictability and unexpected joy just around the bend. Marjorie got that, and she especially got it in her book report to the world of her enchanted Cross Creek.

Chapter by chapter she covers the areas of her deeply felt love for this land in the middle of the state we call Florida. She is clear about the long history of this land and she is certain that, as it has been given other names by those who lived on it, used it and have faded into history, we will too pass on unremembered, some day. There is an urgency, a press to persuade, that for the time she was there, she wanted to capture every bit of it, leaf and tail, brain and lung, love and hate, fruit and forage, fair and turbulent – and share with any reader moved to read her words.

Rawlings lived in a time and place that held on to the uneasy ways people of generations-long difference use to relate to each other – whether the difference is skin color, creed, variations in citizenship, perceived privilege or right to territory, or simply how many coins you have in your pocket (can you purchase my right to be here from the stakeholder?) – and regardless of whether those uneasy ways arise out of hiding behind the authority of a governmental dictate or cling hopefully to fragile person-to-person-local jerry rigging. It seems to me more of her interactions, depended on and were of the latter type.

I keep restraining myself from pulling quote after quote for you to taste in this lush book of Cross Creek’s past. Although I’ve never been within a thousand miles of it, her writing brings up so much of the world about which my grandparents and great-greats told stories, I am overwashed with a familiarity I last had in their presence, under the spell of their voices. A rare eerie déjà vu, that only happens within the covers of a book.

In this book there are definitely situations that raise flags for citizens of 2020, and places where one would love to stop the narrative and get the other side of the story, or question the author further, but as always, as readers, we get what we get.

This is one of those books I will read over and over again, as needed.

5 stars. All perched up in an orange tree, fruit dangling, daring; glossy leaves conspire with sunbeams to challenge a reach.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this memoir of Marjorie Rawlings years in Cross Creek, Florida. She began her sojourn there in 1928, at a time in Florida's history before tourists and developers got ahold of it. There was still wilderness and the type of individualists it took to appreciate and make a living in this type of environment. Rawlings best fiction came from this setting, including "The Yearling" which won a Pulitzer for it's portrayal of a family trying to make a go of a farm in backwoods Florida. Her descriptions of nature, the animals, both wild and tame, and the people she dealt with at the Creek, are radiant with her love and admiration. Like this sentence: "Here in Florida the seasons move in and out like nuns in soft clothing, making no rustle in their passing."
Let me just add that the chapter she wrote on the food and cooking of the region, "Our Daily Bread" was one of my favorites. She prided herself on her culinary skills and also wrote a cookbook, "Cross Creek Cookery" which I'm going to have to buy.
Highly recommended to anyone needing a passport to a simpler, earlier time. One qualifier though: some language and opinions on race relations of the time may offend some readers.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I've felt I "should" read, jsut because I've been hearing about it for so long. Some of the writing was beautiful. However, I couldn't quite get over how condescending she was to her neighbors.
Some of this was certainly a racist thing. I always have mental battles when this occurs in books of the period when that was generally more accepted. On the one hand, it's a time capsule. But I can never completely remove my own views on all of this. It's really come down (at least in my mind) to whether or not the racism effects the flavor of the whole book. And in this case, it did.
I also thought the organization of the book was difficult and I found myself wanting more about how she came to Cross Creek, the writing process (order, etc) and just more about her life.
Overall, some pleasant moments, but it was a struggle to get through.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vacationing in St. Augustine Fla during the winter was a delight, and to find, as I like to do, a book about the area makes the enjoyment of the respite from ordinary life even better. Cross Creek was the Florida find. I had seen the movie years ago, and was captivated by the time and place as well as Ms. Rawlings and her neighbors at "the creek". As we know movies are normally a thin unsatisfying version of the book they are based on, so as I held the book in my hand I was anxious to read it. I was not disappointed, that said, before I finished it, I checked this site to see the opinions of other readers...that was disappointing. The author was accused of being a racist, and while I can certainly understand due to language of the account of Cross Creek, I would have to defend Ms. Rawlings as a woman of her times, but enlightened for them. How can this be said when the "N" word was used and references to blacks that are extremely offensive? I will use her words. "We know that in our relations with one another, the disagreements are unimportant and the union vital." She speaks here of all the residents of the creek. "How can any of us be cruel to one another? How are wars possible, and hate, when we must all face such things? Death is the enemy, and life itself is inimical, for all its bounty. We must hold one another close against the cosmic perils." Beyond her words both these and those that are offensive, are her acts of kindness and her love for the people and the land that breeds individuals of character. As a foreigner she stumbles awkwardly among them, and finally learned how each person, is vital to the other. Her last few lines give the reason I underlined so much of this book, "We know only that we are impelled to fight on the side of the creative forces. We know only that a sense of well-being sweeps over us when we have assisted life rather than destroyed it...yet when a wave of love takes over a human being, love of another...love of nature, love...such an exaltation takes him that he knows he has put his finger on the pulse of the great secret and the great answer."

[Carol Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cross Creek is a beautifully written memoir by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of the much-loved children's book The Yearling. Cross Creek tells how she came to live in a remote part of Central Florida. Her descriptions of nature are vivid.

There was one big problem that made it difficult for me to read the book: Her descriptions of African Americans are extremely patronizing. I'm sure that she liked some of the people she described, and that her way of talking was common at the time, but it's pretty hard to take today. She doesn't use the "N" word, but she sees African Americans as more primitive than white people.

Her descriptions of her white neighbors, virtually all of whom are far less educated than she was, are more respectful.

I read this book because a friend of mine is an expert on Rawlings. Although it gives the flavor of Old Florida, I would hesitate to recommend it.

[SK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rawlings is a lyrical writer who loves the earth and nature. The book originally published in 1942 is a substantial "should read" and I refer you to Rawlings' background in the "reviews" section. A memoir of Rawlings, the book describes her life as a young woman who takes on running a Florida farm in the 1930's. Her city background and her resourceful determination to live in rural backwoods are delightful. Some of her financial decisions were a little hard to believe. With the benefit of hindsight many criticize her racist attitudes. I find her attitude to be no better nor worse than might be expected. It irritates me to hear one-sided singular moralistic judgments.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read anything by MKR, not even The Yearling. I had a lovely old copy of that classic, and I gave it away because the movie about the boy and his deer was so sad. I watched it twice and that was it. My only consolation was that "it was just a story." I convinced myself that nothing like that would happen in "real life."

I didn't know what to expect from Cross Creek. I was pleased to find a couple of meaningful quotes on the first few pages:
p 10 "At one time or another most of us at the Creek have been suspected of a degree of madness. Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity ..."
p 11 "We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men."

This book is more a biography of a place than it is an autobiography of the author. I found myself referring to Wickipedia for some factual information. Cross Creek gives insight to Rawling's 'soul,' but doesn't include much about significant events in her life.

I see why people have commented on Rawling's racist attitude, but the writing fits the times and local behaviors. It's not comfortable, but that was life and this is Rawling's story; she is writing of her own experiences and thoughts. Anything different wouldn't ring true.

The whole section about cooking was too long. I don't care to read about food preparation and it made me sad to think of all the animals that have been destroyed because people like the taste of them (as opposed to necessary for survival). Again, this is Rawling's story so I wouldn't want it written differently, but it did make me reflect on my own beliefs and attitudes.

Her descriptions of the flora and animals of Florida amaze and intrigue me. Do places like she describes still exist, or have they given way to planners and bulldozers? I am surprised that she enjoyed hunts as much as she did, even though she claims that she wasn't a very good shot.

Her concluding statement matches my belief about land ownership: "It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. ... We are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters."

Photos to accompany the descriptions would have been wonderful. Of course, photos taken back in the 1930s would have been black and white.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If you do not own a Jersey cow or have no friend who owns a Jersey cow, eat your mango plain and forget the Olympus beyond your reach.”

Visited the MKR State Park & an enthusiastic park ranger got me hooked on this book. It’s such a cool experience to see a place and then read about it through a writer’s eyes. She really captured north central FL’s wonders.

[Ernie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really didn't know much about Florida until my daughter moved down there 5 or 6 years ago. Every visit has turned up some amazing aspect of nature or history. For example, I grew up in the north-east and springs were trickles of water that emerged from wet meadows on mountainsides; in Florida springs are entire rivers that leap, full blown, from a hole in the ground (no mountainsides). During the last visit, a month ago, my daughter took us to Majorie Kinnan Rawlings home just south of Gainesville. Amazing. While I was aware of her most famous book, The Yearling, I have not read it. (I feel bad about that but she is only one of thousands of great writers that I haven't read. Yet. I am working on it.) --- She lived in this area of Florida from the late 1920s to 1953. She was a northeasterner who used an inheritance to buy a Florida orange grove, on a romantic whim. With the orange grove and her budding writing career, she could afford to live there. The romance did not long affect her husband and he left. She stayed on, writing about a community and life that are both unique to Cross Creek and characteristic of people everywhere.

Cross Creek is an autobiographical account of the place. However, it is less about MKR than the people and the region. Each chapter can stand alone and describes a person, an event, a season, food,... elements of life. While there is a chronological aspect to the book, beginning with her early experiences as a newcomer and leading to stories as an established resident, it is less about her and more about the region. I found the first two chapters slow going because they largely dealt with descriptions of the geography of the region and little about people or events. But once past these introductory chapters, the book was delightful. MKR has an ear for dialect and represents it well. Both the writing and dialect are poetry. -- Often, in an aside, she describes how different events or characters formed the basis for one of the characters in her books or stories.

I highly recommend it. This book was delightful reading and gives insight to a time and place that are unique and almost certainly gone. In most cases, that is good because life was hard. One of the reasons why Majorie Rawlings became an accepted and integral member of this Southern, rural community was that she was one of the resources for survival. That seems a bit stark... but it was a delightful book that, while describing the diverse ways that people overcome adversity, was more about the wonder of living at this time in this beautiful Central Florida rural community.

[Julie Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A souvenir picked up while on vacation in St. Augustine, Florida. I vaguely recall reading this when a young adult but clearly I was unprepared to appreciate the author's lyrical prose style which is laced with a wonderful sense of humor.

It is a clear look at life in back country Florida in 1942 and so sometimes is a bit cringe-worthy. But at that time those things were not cringe worthy which is surely worth reflecting upon in terms of what we do not see as cringe worthy in our own society but which will be revealed as such in the future.

[fpk · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just could not finish this book. It was too troubling for me. I’d thought this would be my kind of read- the acclaimed author of The Yearling tells her story of living on her orange grove in Gainesville Florida. My birthplace.
The setting was in the early 1940’s- so, I know, it’s a different time, a different culture- pre civil rights era… but the outright racism was sooooo upsetting. The language, *her attitudes,* and portrayals of Black Americans..
Despicable-I felt sick continuing . So I quit about 1/3 way through the book.

[Tony Petry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second book by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. I enjoyed it because the story was how life was back then, and I learned a lot about the area I live in and around in Florida.

I may eventually move on to her other books like the Pulitzer Prize winner, "The Yearling."

[Cheryl]

Appallingly racist. Far, far more so than can be excused 'for the times.' One old gentleman who picked oranges for her is compared to a chimpanzee. All n*s are compared to children. MKR wants a "Negro" maid because she doesn't want to have to be polite to a white maid. Etc. etc.

Also classist, for example, forgiving of a white drunkard layabout because he's descended from a richer family, for example. And claiming, for example, that she can see in the flight of the eagle an aristocrat and in that of the buzzard a lazy scavenger.

But in between all that some beautiful descriptions of life in wetlands of old rural Florida, and some interesting history of the attempts to bring public health, education, and proven farming techniques to the Crackers, the n*s, and the others. I did get through it. Somehow.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half was difficult to read. I wanted very much to hold Rawlings as a bit of an idol: an independent woman of the 30s making her own way in Florida. But I found it very hard to admire her in light of her very raw racism. Although she seems to have had some strong personal relationships with black people, there seems to be always a veil of judgment between her and them -- an otherness that is hard to read.

The second half, when Rawlings moves from personal relationships to her relationships with the Florida land and weather, was lovely and lilting and delightful. Uncoupled from the first half, I would have thoroughly enjoyed it. But as a healing elixir, the second half was polluted by the bitter taste of the first half.

[Mary Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

So parts of this book were confusing and the racial relations show a different time and were hard to read. However the writing is lyrical in many places especially as the author describes the rural world she lives in.

[Abigail Moreshead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure how to rate this one if I’m honest. Rounding up from 3.5 stars. I love MJR’s writing style. Her descriptions of north central Florida’s natural beauty and the intimacy she and her neighbors shared with the environment of Cross Creek are stunning. It’s really satisfying to read a book about an area so familiar to me and to learn more about Florida’s history. Many tales of her interactions with people and nature were engrossing and comical. Although, some of her descriptions of the flora and fauna were so extensive that I skimmed a bit.

On the other hand, MKR’s racism really took away from my enjoyment at parts. An entire chapter devoted to describing her experiences with her Black house help is one long reinforcement of long-standing and harmful stereotypes, and the ironic thing is, she undermines those stereotypes without meaning to. Despite her claim that “there is no dependence to be put in the best of them” her Black neighbor Martha is always there to help her out when she is in a pinch. Her orange groves are picked by Black men. And the one white couple she attempts to hire to be her house help she has to fire because the husband won’t lift a finger. But she’s clearly been primed to look for a lack of dependability in Black people, not white people.

This is not to say she doesn’t have good relationships with many of her Black neighbors or that there is anything surprising about her attitude in rural 1930s Florida. But it turns my stomach nonetheless to read her compare the Black men who pick her oranges to chimps or monkeys.

So all in all, there is a great deal to love about this book. But I would recommend it with caveats.

[Shannan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a read of a classic for a reading challenge and for background information for another project of mine. I will say that Rawlings was pretty badass, but the treatment of black people and women in the book, which accurately represents their treatment during this time period in our history, was disgusting. It made this difficult to get through without breaks. Beautiful portrait of wild Florida, ugly portrait of people especially knowing its nonfiction.

[Bailey Kinsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was honestly disappointing to me. I thought Marjorie was this phenomenal independent nature author from the 1930s and loved her book The Yearling. I was so excited to read this, because she paints such a beautiful description of nature.


The amount of racism, putting herself on a pedestal as a godly Christian woman who helps her community- that was absolutely disgusting and appalling.

How people brushed that off throughout reading this is beyond me.

I am truly disappointed.

[Kelsey Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many passages of this book I rate five stars, as well as the overall tone and structure. I love books, fiction or nonfiction, that thoroughly inhabit a place, especially one like Florida that I haven't read about before. The four-star rating is for the attitudes about blacks and a few unsavory things that happened---it was published in 1942 and was just depicting life as Rawlings and her contemporaries saw it, but those implements impacted how much I liked the memoir.

However, a larger proportion had me swooning over the beauty of language and setting and laughing over episodes, characters, or simply a clever turn of phrase. I didn't know Rawlings was such a luminous and humorous writer. I'd never intended to read The Yearling<>/i because I knew it would be sad, but I became deeply interested in Rawlings this March when my family and I stopped at Cross Creek, where she had her house and land. We didn't tour the house and grounds, as there wasn't enough time on our trek across central Florida, but now I wish we had. When I learned she'd written a memoir about Cross Creek, I snatched it up as soon as I could find it.

I was not disappointed. This combines the best of everything about memoirs: a beautiful and exotic setting, quirky and endearing characters, bizarre and interesting adventures, and profound thoughts on life.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
"We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men."

"Yet the four miles to the Creek are stirring, like the bleak, portentous beginning of a good tale."

"Here in Florida the seasons move in and out like nuns in soft clothing, making no rustle in their passing."

"The test of beauty is whether it can survive close knowledge."

"The crepe myrtle beside the bird-bath explodes into Roman candles of bloom and showers of rosy blossoms fall hour after hour into the water, so that the red-birds and doves and mockingbirds emerge covered with flowers from their bathing."

"I have seen no more beautiful thing in my life than my orange grove by night, lighted by the fatwood fires [to keep the grove from freezing]. It is doubly beautiful for the danger and the struggle, like a beloved friend for whose life one battles, drinking in the well known features that may be taken away forever. The fires make a geometric pattern, spaced as regularly as the squares of trees. The pine burns with a bright orange flame and the effect is of countless bivouac fires across a low-wooded plain. The sky is sapphire blue, spangled with stars. The smoke lifts from the fires gray white, melting into gray-blue, drifting like the veils of a dancer under the open skies. Each orange tree is outlined with light. The green leaves shine like jade. The round golden oranges are each lit with a secret inner candle. My heart bursts with the loveliness of the grove and of the night. If only, I think, I could watch such beauty unencumbered by my fears. Then I know that a part of the beauty is the fight to keep it, and that all good things do not come too easily and must perpetually be fought for. Our test is in our recognition of our love and our willingness to do battle for it."

[Libby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was a wonderful writer. The kind of writer who draws you in, as you are absorbed into her world via her descriptive and often wryly humorous writing. These stories of 1930s and 1940s life in back country Florida on an orange grove are interesting and charming.

But then there is the racism. Her casually racist comments paint a sad picture of pre-Civil Rights life in rural Florida, and at times I actually covered my mouth with my hand in horror as I read. Rawlings, who is white, is nice and kind, but she seems to see herself as a benevolent benefactor to black people who are not her equals, as much as she seems to like and respect them and consider some to be dearest friends. The N-word is used casually throughout, jarring and ugly and sickening every time.

High points of this Florida memoir for me: the chapter where Rawlings grabs her shotgun and shoots a neighbor's marauding pig, tired of it eating her petunias. The rich, folksy, fascinating writing such as: "When we were growing up and there were so many of us in the family, all we had was cornpone and white bacon, and we had to eat it or go hungry." And "Some years ago I met a tame raccoon for the first time."

And then there is the chapter titled Black Shadows, a weird, bitter retelling of Rawlings' difficulties with her black employees. I could hardly believe my eyes. This chapter begins, "I am not of the race of Southerners who claim to understand the Negro," "...the possibility of real affection between the individuals of the two races, conditioned by the fact that one is master, and the other, for all of Lincoln, still a slave."

I skimmed, repelled and not wanting to spend any more time in this, but really wanting to get a feel for Rawlings' writings, because next I will read "Idella, Marjorie Rawlings 'Perfect Maid'," the 1992 memoir by Idella Parker, who was Rawlings' housekeeper for 10 years.

As brutal as it feels to read, it is enlightening and educational to read Rawlings' words. She is so frank, so honest. And at heart, kind. I wonder if she ever unlearned her ways of thinking about others who have different ethnicity from hers, as times changed and consciousness was raised, and people learned. People did learn, right? We aren't still there...right?

[Rob Smith, Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rawlings collected writings of life in early 1900s Florida is what I deem a classic in writing. This set of essays is just extraordinary in more than writing. It's also a view into the mind of one with a view of life that is nearly unacceptable in today's narrow-minded, politically correct American life.

My friend B.K. recently brought to my attention, unknowingly, that I had not read Cross Creek. Considering how much I've read of my great state of Florida, I admit embarrassment that Cross Creek hadn't been crossed yet.

Crossing the literary creek was an experience I'm glad I had today and not 30 years ago. Today I know the area and much about what went on in our state at the time of Rawling's writing to better understand her adventures.

Rawlings literary renderings of Florida life are of the type that places the reader in the setting of a natural area, her home or a courtroom. She covers stories of all just mentioned and so much more of the rural living away from big cities. From hunting to farming to the personalities who lived around Cross Creek.

The writing of the natural areas she encounters is a work of beauty, whether she describes hanging spanish moss or the flowering plants she plants. Even better composed are her trips to Cross Creek and her trips along the waters in Florida.

For today's America Rawling's view of life would be considered a variety of popular terminology used by the over-sensitive-set. Yet, she is a she and tagging her sexist, racist or whatever is where the current name-callers get shutdown. The politically-correct crowd is precisely what Rawlings is pointing out she wants to get away from and live a real life with real people. Real people are not politically correct - which becomes abundantly clear as one reads Cross Creek.

This is an amazing work that should be a must-read for any lover of books and exceptional writing.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 10 of 10 points.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is hard to rate because it's both a fascinating look at an area of Florida in the late 1930s and early 1940s and yet it fails to go deep into the author and her struggles. It focuses too much on the nature around Cross Creek and the people the author encounters, yet it avoids delving into the emotions of the author herself. For instance, in Chapter 22, "Hyacinth Drift," Marjorie "lost touch with the Creek." Suddenly the grove was "nothing," and "the difficulties were greater than the compensations." Life had become a "nightmare" but the author never alluded to what was causing her anguish. So she and a friend, Dessie, take an adventurous river trip down the St. John's River. We never know much about her companion Dess except that Dess is younger than Marjorie yet calls her "young un." From some of the things Dessie says, I want to know more about her; she sounds like a fascinating character. And Marjorie herself; I want to know more. She seems to reveal herself only on the surface; we can't see often enough the deeper eddies that drive her.

The book was a slog at times, especially the chapters about each of the seasons. Marjorie was also a product of her time, seeing black people as lesser humans than whites. She seems to love particular individuals, yet makes sweeping statements about their laziness or unreliability. I'm sure this was normal in those days, but shouldn't she have questioned these beliefs more? I would have liked to see more self-reflection and self-revelation.

[Elinor · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favourite memoirs, written by the author of The Yearling. It is somewhat dated now in terms of her attitude toward people of colour, but if you can overlook that, it's an extremely well-written and humorous account of her move to a ramshackle house at the back of beyond (actually northern Florida) where she sits on her wooden deck and types stories on her old manual typewriter, observing both the wonders of nature and the interesting humans she encounters in her self-imposed exile.

[Lamandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful memoir of a lost way of life in the backwoods of Florida. Some course racial language but overall a touching tribute to a time and a place when people were connected to each other, the land, the ebb and flow of the seasons and the plants and animals that they loved so intimately amongst.

[Blanche Konieczka · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't get past the racist attitude. She trivializes the black population going as far as naming a white man as a father figure to all the "darkies". She even uses the imfamous "N" word. As an avid reader I've only wanted to throw one book in the garbage in my life. This book makes two.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read 3 times. Rawlings engagement with nature and people is so powerful and beautifully written - and she pulls you in to her world.