The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling by Ann McCutchan

I went into this biography only somewhat familiar with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings--mostly from the movie version of The Yearling and the movie Cross Creek based on her life. As I read, my interest was held and then I was riveted. By the end, I was moved and a fan.

Rawlings was one of the 1930s writers whose career was benefited by Max Perkins of Scribner, the legendary editor who worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. I had read the biography Max Perkins by A. Scott Berg--forty-plus years ago!--but did not recall Rawlings. 

I spent my teen years reading 20th c writers, including those Perkins mentored, but I don't remember finding women writers listed on the 'greats.' Where was Rawlings? Likely, relegated to the children's section, represented by The Yearling.

Rawlings's mother had hoped for more from life. She determined her daughter would achieve what she had not. When no musical ability was displayed, but Marjorie won a prize for a story, her mother supported—and pushed her—into writing.

Cross Creek, Edward Shenton illustration

After college, Rawlings became a hack writer and journalist until she felt ready to assume her life's real work as a writer. 

She and her husband, also a writer, purchased a Florida orange grove in a backwater community, setting up in a ramshackle house without electricity or plumbing. 

Running a business took much of their energy and time and money, but the Cracker and African American neighbors also gave her material for her work. 

Rawlings’s research brought her to live with neighbors to experience their lives, and she went on crocodile and snake hunts. 

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings book Cross Creek (1933 ed.)
and The Yearling (Grosset & Dunlap movie tie-in edition)
from my personal library

Rawling's life held many disappointments and challenges. Her first marriage failed, her husband jealous of her success. She struggled with alcohol use and continual health concerns. Her personal relationships were tested, including an extended lawsuit. She suffered from doubt. She also achieved the Pulitzer Prize and a second marriage with a supporting and loving husband.

I had moments of discomfort with Rawling's language of white supremacy, referencing her African American friends and servants by what we today would consider derogatory terms, but which represented typical white mores at that time. 

McCutchan takes readers on a journey into Rawling's transformation from accepting her inherited values to becoming friends with Zora Neale Hurston and raising her voice for equal rights.

Edward Shenton illustration for The Yearling

Rawlings also became involved with environmental groups. 

A study in contrasts, Rawlings could tap into her society background and was friends with writers and publisher's daughters, but she could be bawdy and rowdy, toting a gun on a hunt. She even went into the scrub wearing a silk nightgown to rescue an animal. I loved her esteem for Thomas Wolfe and her heartbreak over his early loss before he could reach his artistic maturity.

This is terrific biography.  

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling
by Ann McCutchan
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date April 26, 2021   
Hardcover $35.00
ISBN: 9780393353495

from the publisher

A comprehensive and engaging biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the classic The Yearling.

Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn—much less one that has become synonymous with Floridian literature writ large.

Rawlings was a tough, passionate, and independent woman who refused the early-twentieth-century conventions of her upbringing. Determined to exist outside her comfort zone, she found her voice in the remote hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. Between hunting alligator and managing an orange grove, Rawlings employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life an unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail—a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. 

The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Rawlings, her contemporaries—including her legendary editor Maxwell Perkins and friends Zora Neale Hurston and Ernest Hemingway—and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her.

About the Author: 

Ann McCutchan is the author of five books of memoir, essay, and biography. The founding director of the University of Wyoming's MFA in creative writing program and former editor of American Literary Review, McCutchan grew up in Florida and now lives in Wyoming.