Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

 

At one time or another most of us at the Creek have been suspected of a degree of madness. Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity, and we are all individualists here.

This 1942 novel of rural Florida is rife with life, redolent with place. Observations and anecdotes abound picking out what is common to all human experience and perhaps rendered all the more noticeable as we garner it from a background of so few human characters.

Every human we encounter in Cross Creek has a story to tell about ourselves.

Old Aunt Martha Mickens, with her deceptive humility and her face like poured chocolate, is perhaps the shuttle that has woven our knowledge, carrying back and forth, with the apparent innocence of a nest-building bird, the most revealing bits of gossip; the sort of gossip that tells, not trivial facts, but human motives and the secrets of human hearts. Each of us pretends that she carries these threads only about others and never about us, but we all know better, and that none of us is spared.

The rural life, the frontier life as seen by one who actually lived it as opposed to how many from congested areas might see it.

Folks called the road lonely, because there is not human traffic and human stirring. Because I have walked it so many times and seen such tumult of life there, it seems to me one of the most populous highways of my acquaintance. I have walked it in ecstasy, and in joy it his beloved. Every pine tree, every gallberry bush, every passion vine, every joree rustling in the underbrush, is vibrant. I've walked it in trouble, and the wind in the trees beside me is easing. I have walked it in despair, and the red of the sunset is my own blood dissolving into the night's darkness. For all such things were on earth before us, and will survive after us, and is given to us to join ourselves with them and to be comforted.

Rawlings has a sincere gift. I’ve never encountered such a novel way to describe the annoyance of mosquitoes.

One would think that exposed neck, arms, the face would suffice the hungriest of insects. But the mosquito is a Freudian, taking delight only in the hidden places.

Rawlings’ limns the life of early rural Florida with such skill I feel the richer for having visited on the page, and the poorer for not having visited in actuality.

We at the Creek draw our conclusions about the world from our intimate knowledge of one small portion of it.

Old Boss said, “The Creek don't amount to anything. The people don't amount to anything. But if you're sick and have no money, they'll cook for you and fetch it to you, and they'll doctor you, and if you get past their doctoring, they'll send for a doctor and pay his bill. And if you die, they'll take up a collection and bury you. I figure it's just as close to heaven here as any other place.”

Easy A.