Rating: 
Summary: This book will stir the soul of anyone who loves Florida.
Review: Although I am a native-born Floridian, it was not until a bitter winter's day that I first picked up a tattered, first-print copy of Cross Creek in the old library in Hope Valley, Rhode Island, a town where I resided for five long, cold years. I missed Florida terribly, more than I had ever missed any person. From the first few paragraphs, I felt a special kinship with the author. At last, someone understood! I found great comfort in the pages of this wonderful book, with it's beautifully written, descriptive passages. Mrs. Rawlings had a deep appreciation for even the minutest details of the land, creatures and water that surrounded her. I truly wish I could have know this lady. Today I live about 25 miles from Cross Creek and visit her old homestead and groves whenever I get the chance. They have been well preserved in the condition in which she left them 45 years ago. It is easy to see where her inspiration came from when you stand in her yard among the beautiful and fragrant orange, grapefruit and tangerine trees--and when you view the creek itself. I was amazed to find the creek and farm were almost exactly as I had pictured them while reading Cross Creek. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Timeless Classic
Review: As a native Floridian (although transplanted now to South Carolina), I have found the works of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to be a welcomed homecoming and a delightful insight into the "frontier" Florida life of the 1930s and '40s. Rawlings' words are timeless because they animate a timeless period in Florida history--when things were still largely rural, natural, and undisturbed by capital investment and the tourism boon of the last thirty-plus years. "Cross Creek," moreover, is the perfect introduction to Rawlings for the uninitiated, a moving narrative of her life and career amid the backwoods and streams of a bygone Florida. Yet "Cross Creek" is not simply an autobiography; it is a lavish tale in itself. I highly recommend it.I also suggest the motion picture version of "Cross Creek," starring Mary Steenburgen and Peter Coyote (1982?). It has recently been re-released, so you should be able to find a copy easily. The movie is perhaps "even better" than the book, with its stunning cinematography of the natural beauties of Florida woods, creeks, rivers, and swamps. It stays fairly true to the book, as well, and Steenburgen and Coyote are endearing as Rawlings and Norton Baskin. Rip Torn is another wonderful addition to the cast. Pick both of these up today!
Rating:
Summary: A Timeless Classic
Review: As a native Floridian (although transplanted now to South Carolina), I have found the works of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to be a welcomed homecoming and a delightful insight into the "frontier" Florida life of the 1930s and '40s. Rawlings' words are timeless because they animate a timeless period in Florida history--when things were still largely rural, natural, and undisturbed by capital investment and the tourism boon of the last thirty-plus years. "Cross Creek," moreover, is the perfect introduction to Rawlings for the uninitiated, a moving narrative of her life and career amid the backwoods and streams of a bygone Florida. Yet "Cross Creek" is not simply an autobiography; it is a lavish tale in itself. I highly recommend it. I also suggest the motion picture version of "Cross Creek," starring Mary Steenburgen and Peter Coyote (1982?). It has recently been re-released, so you should be able to find a copy easily. The movie is perhaps "even better" than the book, with its stunning cinematography of the natural beauties of Florida woods, creeks, rivers, and swamps. It stays fairly true to the book, as well, and Steenburgen and Coyote are endearing as Rawlings and Norton Baskin. Rip Torn is another wonderful addition to the cast. Pick both of these up today!
Rating:
Summary: Inside the Grove
Review: Cross Creek is located just south of Gainesville, Florida, and in spite of the urban sprawl the community is today almost as isolated as it was in 1928, when Marjorie Kennan Rawlings and her first husband Charles Rawlings purchased a farm house and citrus grove in the area. At the time of the purchase, Rawlings was a failed novelist in a bad marriage, and both farm house and grove were neglected. A decade later she was a respected writer on the eve of her most popular novel and happily divorced, and the farm and its citrus groves were very much going concerns. Rawlings would eventually remarry, and both her second marriage and her literary success would gradually lead her away from both her farm and the Cross Creek community--but she would never leave them entirely, always returning for the inspiration that fed her best works. The property was still in her possession and still in use as both a citrus grove and occasional residence at the time of her sudden death of cerebral hemorrhage in 1953. Rawlings left the it to the University of Florida, and in 1970 the property was turned over to the State of Florida for restoration and management. Restoration was completed in 1996, and while the large citrus grove that once surrounded the farm house has been reduced to a representative portion, visitors can now see the property as it existed in the 1930s and 1940s. Although Rawlings won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel THE YEARLING and would publish several other novels and short story collections, today her literary reputation rests largely on the book CROSS CREEK, in which she details both her own struggle on the land the lives of the community as she knew it during the 1930s. While the book is clearly autobiographical, it is not autobiography per se; she gives little attention to her personal history, preferring to focus instead on the landscape and the individuals that surround her. The stories she offers are by turns funny, sad, thoughtful, each informed by an intensely felt observation of her environment. And while critics may accuse her of having been excessively sentimental in her fiction, no such sentimentality besets this particular work. It is brilliant from start to finish. CROSS CREEK was published in 1942, and while it is very much of its era in its depiction of rural society and racial considerations, it also proved very much ahead of its time. It is profoundly concerned with ecology long before the term was popularized, and not only are its characters vividly alive, they move against a landscape that is as alive as they, a landscape that at once harsh and nurturing, at once giving and indifferent, and throughout the text (and most particularly in its final chapter) Rawlings repeatedly takes the point of view that we are not the owners of the earth, but its trustees; its care is in our hands. I have read CROSS CREEK several times, and I returned to it in the wake of a visit to the Rawlings farm in 2003--and while it is not necessary to actually visit Cross Creek in order to fall in love with this book, they each inform the other. The book is somewhat obscure; the community of Cross Creek is difficult to find on the map and awkward to reach, hardly a place you would stumble upon by accident. It must be reached in deliberation. The guide at the Rawlings farm told me that in spite of this they received some forty thousand visitors from around the world each year--visitors drawn by the power of Rawlings' work and a determination to share in the environment she so loved. That is both testament and recommendation enough. --GFT (Amazon Reviewer)--
Rating:
Summary: To Live the Life One Wishes to Live...
Review: Cross Creek is one of the finest memoirs ever written, filled with the grace and beauty of fine writing 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 all her beloved books would be born, including this memoir covering the years of hardships and beauty at the creek. Rawlings herself would become a part of the earth and land as she was reborn here in Cross Creek and would leave behind literary achievements such as South Moon Under, Golden Apples, When the Whipporwll, Cross Creek Cookery, and of course, her Pulitzer winner, 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's observations of a young destitute (even for the creek) couple who would be portrayed so movingly in her short story, Jacob's Ladder. Rawlings's recollections of her friendship with Moe and his daughter Mary, who was his reason for living and the only one in his family, including his wife, who cared when he came or went, are told with such beauty we feel pain ourselves when he takes his last breath at the creek. Her deep friendships over the years with Tom and Old Martha are told with humor, honesty and a gift for description few have ever had. Tinged with sadness is Rawlings's relationship both as employer and friend to 'Geechee. Rawlings would attempt to help her to no avail as this sweet personality slowly became an unemployable alcoholic, her mistreatment at the hands of a womanizer unworthy of her love at the heart of her problem. It is perhaps at the bottom of a few bitter comments from Rawlins. But Cross Creek is about the earth and our relationship to it. When we stray from it we become less because it is a part of us. Rawlings came to believe over time that when we lose this 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 Rawlings's descriptions of a 'pet' racoon of mischievious nature and such cantankerous disposition as to almost seem human. Rawlings's 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 read the entire book, taking into consideration a number of factors. Published in 1942 and covering many years prior in a backwoods area of Florida, at a time when racial equality was a distant dream, some may be offended by Rawlings's 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. Rawlings treated everyone fairly but a long string of farmhands prone to drink and violence, including the one who would destroy her friend and employee 'Geechee, prompted her to lump an entire race into one group, her friends at the creek being exceptions. Her thoughts on the matter, which are included in one of the 23 chapters, do not really fit in with the rest of this memoir. Having first read this over twenty years ago I did not recall it, and it certainly gave me pause. It is only proof, that even someone as intelligent and literate as Rawlings, can intellectualize a misguided view until it sounds right. Taking everything into consideration I do not feel it should keep anyone from reading this most beautiful and heartwarming of memoirs. But others may feel differently, and have a right to do so. Rawlings's 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 a myraid of dishes meticulously prepared and labored over for hours, is delightful and unforgettable. Cross Creek will make you hungry for succulent fruits, cornbread an hot biscuits with wild plum jelly, and most of all, life. 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 it is not possible, and 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)
Rating:
Summary: A Look at the Vanishing Past
Review: I picked up a copy of this book from my mother's bookshelf and began to read it, only to find myself returning to it at every opportunity. As a black woman, I found the racial terminology the author used discomfiting, but did not let that deter me from reading the book. I thought it one of the most lyrical, thoughtful, and in-depth descriptions of a people and an area that I have ever read. Transplanted physically to Florida from Los Angeles, California a few years ago, I found myself transported mentally as well, as I read this book. I recognized Ms. Rawlings as a truly gifted writer. You will not regret having read her story.
Rating: 
Summary: A Book One Might Compare
Review: In the late thirties and early forties two women writers were finding in the area of the St.John's river in northeast Florida a basis for their stories, true or imagined. These two women were Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who had discovered north Florida, and Zora Neale Hurston, who left it for New York City. Today Hurston's reputation is very great while Rawlings, who remains widely read, is generally considered sentimental. I have often thought it would be interesting to teach a class that included both Hurston and Rawlings, particularly so that one could address straight-on issues of Race in Rawlings's Cross Creek. The stories of black and white living at Cross Creek might be illumined by Hurston's stories, their uses of dialect compared, their attachment to an environment explored. I like Cross Creek, have liked it for many years, but I have always wished I could read it in the context of what the black population actually thought. Hurston might help me to do that. The best parts of Rawlings are her sensitivity to the natural world and her open acceptance of just about everybody. She lived in a world and tried to undersand it, not reform it, but it would be interesting to see how Hurston plays against her.
Rating:
Summary: A Book One Might Compare
Review: In the late thirties and early forties two women writers were finding in the area of the St.John's river in northeast Florida a basis for their stories, true or imagined. These two women were Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who had discovered north Florida, and Zora Neale Hurston, who left it for New York City. Today Hurston's reputation is very great while Rawlings, who remains widely read, is generally considered sentimental. I have often thought it would be interesting to teach a class that included both Hurston and Rawlings, particularly so that one could address straight-on issues of Race in Rawlings's Cross Creek. The stories of black and white living at Cross Creek might be illumined by Hurston's stories, their uses of dialect compared, their attachment to an environment explored. I like Cross Creek, have liked it for many years, but I have always wished I could read it in the context of what the black population actually thought. Hurston might help me to do that. The best parts of Rawlings are her sensitivity to the natural world and her open acceptance of just about everybody. She lived in a world and tried to undersand it, not reform it, but it would be interesting to see how Hurston plays against her.
Rating:
Summary: Authentic old south and old Florida
Review: It was very disconserting to me to read the reviews on this book and and see the term " racism " used so much. Ms. Rawlings revealed the old south and old Florida as it was and is and will always will be. Accept it or don't waste your time reading this marvelous book of the old south of and of old Florida. Robert G. Holloway
Rating:
Summary: Authentic old south and old Florida
Review: It was very disconserting to me to read the reviews on this book and and see the term " racism " used so much. Ms. Rawlings revealed the old south and old Florida as it was and is and will always will be. Accept it or don't waste your time reading this marvelous book of the old south of and of old Florida. Robert G. Holloway
|
