Search - Cross Creek

what an excellent, magical book. quite a way with language, almost like poetry, makes you want to move to the country somewhere (especially north Florida)

marvellous glimpse into the life of the pulitzer prize winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, this is the story of her lif3e in the remote area of the Florida everglades where she lived for 13 years.

Since we have just relocated to Florida, to a house built in 1937, this account of life in a rural Florida settlement in the late thirties and forties had a special interest and resonance for me. But in any case it is a highly readable, very human memoir of life experienced by an independent-minded woman. A woman who was also a fine craftsperson with words as well as a keen observer of human foibles, her own not least of all. It paints a good picture of life trying to wring a profit out of an orange grove and cooperate with a finite but varied cast of neighbors and black servants. It also shows a little of how a writer might progress in the midst of such a life.
Rather than following a timeline, the book is divided into chapters dealing with various topics and feels as if it was written while the author was still residing, at Cross Creek. As in fact she was, although she left after thirteen years of that life, partly as a result of the toll of a lawsuit brought by one of the walk-on players in the memoir who saw herself too honestly drawn.