Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is perhaps underappreciated outside Florida for her literary legacy and also not sufficiently understood even in the Sunshine State. Who was she, really? It’s a question author Ann McCutchan answers brilliantly in her new biography of Rawlings.
Florida stars in new Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings biography
Ann McCutchanâs life of the author of âThe Yearlingâ and âCross Creekâ makes rich use of correspondence to put her works in context.
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At her home in Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and one of her hunting dogs strike a pose. [ Tampa Tribune ]
Updated 2 hours ago
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had two long marriages and a number of romances, but her most enduring love affair was with a place, not a person.
That passion became the source for her best-known books,
The Yearling and
Itâs also at the center of
The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling, by Ann McCutchan. With access to the vast collection of Rawlingsâ letters, manuscripts and more from her papers held by the University of Florida, McCutchan, who grew up in Florida and is the founding director of the University of Wyomingâs MFA in creative writing program, has crafted an engaging, lively biography of an accomplished and complicated woman.