The Life She Wished to Live

December 1, 2020
An affectionate biography of the beloved author. Former editor of the American Literary Review, McCutchan's goal in chronicling the life of Rawlings (1896-1953), who put north-central Florida "on the national literary map," was to "illuminate" her "humanity...and mind," not to indulge in "literary criticism." At a time when women were not offered many opportunities outside the home, Rawlings was an ambitious girl who strove to succeed to spite her overbearing, manipulative mother. She demonstrated her writing talent during her teen years, and at the University of Wisconsin, she immersed herself in its intellectual environment and learned to avoid too many adjectives and adverbs and embrace the power of nouns and verbs. Though slow to start, the biography picks up steam when McCutchan describes Marjorie's move with her husband to a citrus farm in Cross Creek, Florida; she wrote to a friend that the "beauty of the place is a perpetual treat." Work by work, McCutchan carefully details Rawlings' gradual development as a professional writer who keenly absorbed this beautiful area's history, culture, and dialects. Her "first long Florida story" was "Jacob's Ladder," which famed editor Maxwell Perkins accepted for Scribner's Magazine in 1930. Thus began their lengthy, "extraordinary relationship." Rawlings' first published novel, South Moon Under (1933), was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and a Pulitzer finalist. Now divorced, she was achieving her longtime dream of literary acceptance. Rawlings established friendships with Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston, who called Marjorie "my sister" and loved her portrayal of the "Negro characters" in Cross Creek. When Perkins received her "boy's book," The Yearling, he "offered only minor quibbles." It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. When the Whippoorwill (1940) got her on the cover of the Christian Science Monitor's "Today's Woman" issue. In addition to her thorough biographical portrait, McCutchan also chronicles the protracted libel suit over her description of a local woman in Cross Creek. An all-inclusive and intimate assessment that could help Rawlings attract a new generation of readers.

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February 1, 2021

Writer McCutchan's (Marcel Moyse: Voice of the Flute) biography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling is both an exploration of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's life and inspirations and an insightful look at the ups and downs of the creative process. McCutchan reveals American journalist and writer Rawlings (1896-1953) as an iconoclast who shunned traditional female roles and modes of behavior, to the disappointment of her ambitious and controlling mother. Inheriting her father's desire for farm life, Rawlings purchased a Florida orange grove in her early thirties, immersing herself in the culture and dialect of her rural neighbors and shaping her fiction around the theme of our uneasy coexistence with nature. Drawing upon Rawlings's abundant surviving correspondence, McCutchan doesn't shy away from exposing the temperamental behavior that often strained her subject's relationships with friends and lovers, or the frequent mood swings--exacerbated by illness and excessive drinking--that complicated her work habits. McCutchan balances this by showing how Rawlings encouraged and inspired fellow writers, recognized and wrestled with her own racial prejudices, and became an advocate for conservation. VERDICT A comprehensive, well-researched portrait of the life of Rawlings and her creative struggles that will engage a variety of readers.--Sara Shreve, Newton, KS

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2021
Florida native McCutchan captures Pulitzer Prize-winning Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' unconventional life, from her peripatetic girlhood to her great love, the beautiful, temperamental terrain of north-central Florida, in a well-paced and absorbing biography. She also succeeds, most notably, in presenting the author of the now classic coming-of-age novel, The Yearling, in her own voice, mirroring her impulse to let her characters speak for themselves. And what a life it is to record. From Rawlings' fashionable if somewhat facile early publications to her emergence as a mature writer under the guidance of famed editor Maxwell Perkins, the singularity of her life shapes her work. Smudging her orange grove against an impending frost or convening with neighbors "on the fringe of life" is as crucial to her authorial development as encounters with Robert Frost and Thomas Wolfe or a foundation-shaking friendship with Zora Neale Hurston. One hopes that this appraisal of Rawlings leads to a revival of interest in her as both a chronicler of a time and place and an exacting practitioner of the writer's craft.

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