Cross Creek

68 this morning, too warm for this time of year. A hot day, in the low 80's until some showers this afternoon that cooled us down. Thank goodness.

In the 70's I bought a box of books at a yard sale, a dollar for the lot. There were a lot of best sellers from the 1940's, and one of them was Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The book is the story of Rawlings' move from the city to a place called Cross Creek, Florida. Her new home was a formerly working, derelict orange grove on 74 acres in remote, swampy north-central Florida. 

Her story has fascinated me since the first time I read the book, and I have wanted to visit her home ever since. I wondered if there would be anything to see, but 3 years ago a friend told me the place had been preserved, was on the register of historic places, and that there were tours. So this trip to Florida offered me the opportunity to see it for myself.

To prepare, Larry and I watched the movie Cross Creek again, for probably the 10th time. We also read up on Rawlings' life, so we had some background for our visit.

It was a beautiful, cool--Floridians would say cold since it was in the 40's- north Florida day, and we arrived in time for the first tour of the day. There was a small group of people, about a dozen I'd guess, and our tour guide Nick gave us a thorough history before we entered the house.

This house was particularly interesting to us, because Rawlings lived without electricity for about 10 years here. Can you imagine what that was like, in Florida? But look at the porches, the shading trees, and the screens. Her home was located very close to a lake too, so there were probably some cooling breezes. And mosquitoes. Yuck.

This was her dock area. She had a small boat she would sometimes take out on the lake or into the swamps, and once took a long journey down the St. John River. 

Small wildflowers, unknown to me, bloomed along the path to the house.

This is the remnant of what was once an extensive orange grove. Rawlings moved to Cross Creek in 1928 with her first husband. She had a small inheritance that provided the down payment, and the couple hoped to pay for their land and get their livelihood from the oranges. When the Depression hit, that hope shrank, and put pressure on the marriage, and on Marjorie to write stories that could bring in income. Originally she tried to write classic gothic stories like the works of the Bronte sisters, but her work got a poor reception from publishers.

The screened front porch was where Rawlings spent much of her time, often napping on this bed in the heat of the day. The house was in bad condition when she arrived but over the years she made improvements and even had additions built. The original house dates to the 1880's with some additions before 1910; then Rawlings added a few more so it is a low, sprawling place.

Marjorie did most of her writing right here, on the other end of the porch. Many of the furnishings, including her typerwriter, are in the house, augmented by donations that fit the period and what would have been her lifestyle.

Marjorie and Charles divorced in 1933, the same year she had her first major success with South Moon Under, a book that captured the essence of life in the Florida backcountry. Her husband Charles was also a writer, but did not have the same level of talent and that probably caused some of the friction in their marriage. Her book was first runner-up for the Pulitzer prize that year, and Marjorie bought a generator with some of the money from the book. 

Her new fame eased her financial situation greatly, and she gave up writing gothics and focused her work from that time on almost exclusively on stories set in Florida. She eventually remarried, but always spent part of every year at Cross Creek until her death in 1953 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Rawlings' most famous book, The Yearling, is classified today as a Young Adult novel, but when it was published it was read widely by adult audiences, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. She wrote many other well-received novels, but The Yearling continues to be her most popular work. It and Cross Creek, written in 1942, were both made into films.

More views around the house and property:

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.