Marjorie Kinnan was born in Washington, DC on August 8, 1896, the daughter of an attorney, Frank Kinnan and his wife, Ida. At the age of six years, she started writing. As a child she submitted her stories to the children’s sections of various publications. When she was fifteen years of age, she received a prize for one of her stories, The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty.

In 1918, she received a degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. While attending the university, she met Charles Rawlings, who was a writer also; they were married in 1919. The couple relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, writing for the Louisville Courier-Journal. In a later relocation, she worked for the Rochester Journal in Rochester, New York, while there she wrote a syndicated column called, Songs of the Housewife.

Using money from a small inheritance left by her mother, the couple purchased 72 acres in Florida in 1928. Marjorie seemed completely fascinated with the remoteness of the place, where people were hard-working, but very poor, who scraped out an existence raising their own crops and livestock. The name of the place was Cross Creek, located near Hawthorne, Florida. From these backwoods in Florida, Marjorie achieved her greatest fame, writing fiction stories that included characters based on many of her friends in Cross Creek and the events in their lives.

In 1931, two of her stories, Cracker Chidlings and Jacob’s Ladder were published by Scribner’s, the famous New York City publisher.

In 1933, her first novel, South Moon Under was published. It described life in the Cross Creek area through her main character, Lant, a young man who supported himself and his mother by making and selling moonshine. Moonshining was often the subject of her stories. She spent several weeks in the company of a moonshiner in order to better understand the operation before writing her novel. South Moon Under was included in the Book of the Month club and it became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

By 1933, Charles had grown tired of the rural lifestyle and a divorce ensued. However, Marjorie remained in Cross Creek.

Not all of her books were that well received. Golden Apples was published in 1935 and Rawlings later said of it, “It was interesting trash instead of literature”. This very successful writer, who had already achieved a degree of fame, probably had no inkling of what lay ahead less than three years away!

In 1938, Rawlings had another book released. It told the story of a young boy who adopted a fawn. When the deer began to eat the family’s crops, the son was ordered by his father to kill it. The novel was The Yearling. It was catapulted to Book of the Month and even higher; in 1939, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings! In 1946, a movie, starring Gregory Peck, was made based on the novel. Today, the movie and the book are considered classics.

In 1941, Rawlings married Norton Baskin a hotelier in Ocala. He remodeled an old mansion and turned it into the Castle Warden Hotel in San Augustine. They made their primary home in Crescent Beach and continued their respective occupations. She continued to spend a lot of her time in Cross Creek.

In 1942 Cross Creek was published, an autobiographical account of her life at Cross Creek. This book was also selected by the Book of the Month Club. In addition, it was issued in a special armed forces edition for troops overseas during World War II. She followed this with a book called Cross Creek Cookery, which was a collection of recipes, indicating her great love of cooking.

However, in 1943 the book, Cross Creek angered one of her Cross Creek friends, Zelma Cason, who filed an invasion of privacy suit against her asking $100,000 in damages. An invasion of privacy charge had never been tried in a Florida court, but the courts found a libel charge to be too ambiguous.

Without mentioning her last name, Rawlings had written: “Zelma is an ageless spinster, resembling an angry and efficient canary. She manages her orange grove and as much of the village or county as needs management or will submit to it. I cannot decide whether she should have been a man or a mother. She combines the more violent characteristics of both and those who ask for or accept her ministrations think nothing at being cursed loudly at the very instant of being tenderly fed, clothed, nursed, or guided through their troubles.”

The trial took its toll on Rawlings, but the court ruled in her favor at first. The rulings of the court were overturned at a later date and Rawlings was ordered to pay one dollar in damages to the plaintiff. She paid her dollar and moved away from Cross Creek, never to write of it again!

In 1953 The Sojourner was published. It was a departure from the Cross Creek setting with the story occurring in the north. Though the story was set in Michigan, she purchased an old farmhouse in Van Hornesville, New York. She would spend part of each year living in the house for the remainder of her life.

On December 14, 1953, she passed away at the age of 57 in Saint Augustine, Florida of a cerebral hemorrhage and is buried alongside her husband, Norton Baskin in the Antioch Cemetery near Island Grove, Florida. The inscription on her tombstone reads, “Through her writing she endeared herself to the people of the world.”

Following her death, a children’s book, The Secret River was released in 1956. In 2002, a manuscript of her first novel, Blood of My Blood, was found and published. It was written in 1928, but had never been published.

Today, her home in Cross Creek, Florida is the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park.