Cross Creek
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: 1st Touchstone Edition
- Author: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
- Publisher: Scribner
- Release Date: March 1996
- ISBN-10: 0684818795
- ISBN-13: 9780684818795
- List Price: $16.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryOriginally 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. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Cross Creek
Rating:
The book I ordered was delivered in a timely manner and was in excellent condition.
An older autobiography with a twist
Rating:
For any who don't know, Rawlings gained her initial notoriety for the book, The Yearling. Cross Creek is an autobiography of her years spent on 75 acres just below Gainesville which became her retreat for a number of years. This was in the 1940s when much of Florida was still rural. My wife and I own a mobile home in rural Lake City, Florida, but it is not nearly as secluded as Rawling's place. She presents a wonderfully vivid picture of untamed Florida during this period. Surprisingly, the book is not a self-indulgent reflection on her books and how well they sold. She concentrates more upon her natural surroundings and the individuals around her, both friend and foe. If I recommended a memoir by a writer living in rural Florida, you would probably not run out and buy the book. But Rawling's honest transparency and unabashed candor make this a book worth reading.
Unexplainably Profound
Rating:
I have difficulty putting my love for this book into words. I feel a kinship with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings that defies reason. After reading this book, I had to buy every book I could find about the author, and then I went to Florida to see her house and farm at Cross Creek. I have read the book aloud to other people twice and have given copies of it to friends. It may not move others in the same way as it does me, but it is a lovely depiction of life in rural Florida in the 1930s.
Great read
Rating: 
We love Marjorie Rawlins. She has a wonderful story to tell and her recipes are delicious.
Creative Solitude
Rating:
Hurtling down Interstate 75 in Florida, between Gainesville and Ocala, you may see a sign marking the exit for the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park. It is well worth your time making that little side trip to Cross Creek to find a piece of Old Florida as it used to be, before rampant development gobbled up the wilderness.
Marjorie lived here in the thirties, in a simple, cedar-shingled farm house, without benefit of indoor plumbing or air conditioning, in creative solitude. Taking care of her orange grove, her pecan trees, her vegetable garden, her cows, chickens, and ducks, she lived off the land, undisturbed by the hustle-bustle of modern civilization. She established a kind of respectful symbiosis with her neighbors, black and white, and with nature. What we pompously call race relations was for her merely a question of plain human decency.
She was not totally isolated. She owned a car that could take her, over rutted dirt roads, to the nearest outposts of civilization. She loved having visitors, cooking for them, hearing their stories. Having lived in New York as a journalist, she had a lot to learn about country life; but as a child she had spent summers at her grandfather's farm, and the love of the earth was in her blood.
There was no time for idleness and fashionable "ennui". When she had done her chores, she sat down at her typewriter. Maxwell Perkins came to visit and encouraged her to write what she knew and felt deeply about, and her reputation soared. When she was able to save some money, she installed an indoor bathroom - a triumph she relates with an engaging mixture of pride and self-deprecating humor.
Marjorie was not easily intimidated - stood her ground against glowering thugs as well as marauding animals. When a criminal she had sprung from jail became abusive, she knew how to get rid of him. And she was not above shooting the occasional squirrel she found partaking too liberally of her pecan harvest. You get a taste of true frontier living when you read how she shot a neighbor's rogue pig and made a feast of it, or how she used a Sears Roebuck Catalogue to dispatch a snake coiled up in her bathroom. Going on bear hunts or collecting rattle snakes with expert friends provided more excitement than she had bargained for.
She writes without apparent artifice, in a straightforward, unpretentious style. She can be lyrical, or wistful, or ironic, but she is never sentimental. She does not gloss over discouraging episodes, nor does she conceal the fact that she often made a complete fool of herself. While the local people regarded her with a mixture of curiosity and indulgence (and some of them undoubtedly took advantage of her) she inspired fierce loyalty in those who worked closely with her.
If you visit this place, do not stop with the neatly restored farm house. Go to the nearby fishing camp and feel the peace and tranquillity she must have experienced when sitting under a tall tree and looking out over the water.
You'll return to your busy schedule with a slightly altered perpective.
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