Escape to a kinder time and richer life in exotic setting.

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	• Cross Creek (Mockingbird Book) Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Mockingbird Books, 1984 - 279 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews
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highly recommended

Escape to a kinder time and richer life in exotic setting.

This is truly a classic. The humor is so sharp that even the most urban can laugh hardily. The moral lessons are here! Marjorie Rawlings uses lots of "fancy" words but her message always comes across. She really transports you to a different century and you will finish the book feeling as if you have really visited Cross Creek or with a wish that you could visit now.

This book will stir the soul of anyone who loves Florida.

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.

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Cross Creek is an American Classic

More than 50 years ago, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings made rural Florida her home and the subject of some of her best writing. Her humor, lyricism and nostalgia are best captured in Cross Creek.

Cross Creek is a book of essays about the life and people in Marjorie's world. Some of her characterizations might not translate in our ethnically-sensitized world and I understand the author was sued by one subject who didn't appreciate her characterization. However, Marjorie's respect and affection for her subjects is apparent in every sentence. Her appreciation for the natural wonders of her world (even insects and reptiles) will refresh the perspective of those who live close to nature and create a longing in those who do not.

Finally, Cross Creek is a glimpse into a long overlooked and vanishing part of the American South. Before the explosion of Orlando, a lot of Florida was rural acreage inhabited by people who lived off the land. Marjorie does not romanticize this existance; one of her wryest essays is about her long-running battle against outdoor plumbing. However, she does show the victories and tragedies of a vanishing people.

Cross Creek is to be read, re-read and loved. I only wish I could discover it all over again, myself.

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A Look at the Vanishing Past

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.

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A Book One Might Compare

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.

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