In 1928 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings used a small inheritance to purchase an orange grove at Cross Creek Florida. There the natural wilderness and the mixture of the human inhabitants became the inspiration for much of her work thereafter.
Cross Creek is slightly fictionalized non-fiction and also autobiographical. It was close enough to non-fiction that one person in it sued Rawlings for libel.
Rawlings had become very famous when she published The Yearling which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 and was made into a successful 1946 movie that still airs periodically on late night TV.
Cross Creek highlights Rawling's relationships with her neighbors who are colorful enough, but the natural surroundings only add to the color. Cross Creek was unusual for its time. In 1942 well before the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, blacks and whites lived and worked together in harmony in Cross Creek.
This copy of Cross Creek was published the year of the copyright in 1942. Charles Scribner published the first edition in the same year. This edition was published by Grosset & Dunlap by arrangement with Scribner. It is 368 pages. The chapter headers are illustrations by noted illustrator and book decorator, Edward Shenton,
The book is hardback, cloth covered boards with gold imprint on the spine and front. The book is solid but with some wear at the edges of the cover. It has a previous owner's name plate inside the cover and some penciled notes on the fly page and one page has a paragraph underlined in red. Otherwise the book is sound and clean. No dust jacket.
