text: Rawlings explores the lives and interations of the odd assortment of people living in Cross Creek, Florida in the early 1900s.  It is often assigned reading for teens, but I doubt that most of them can appreciate it.  Her accounts of neighbors feuding and subsistance living gives us many lessons in human behavior.
  The lyrical descriptions of wildlife and the orange groves and wild landscape are very appealing.  Your mouth waters as you read her essays on downhome foods like hush puppies.  She turned those into a cookbook which I'll have to try out.
  Modern readers squirm uncomfortably at her use of the N----- word and her characterization of blacks as irresponsible, drunken, immoral, etc.  It is probably a faithful representation of common thinking at the time it was written, so recognize it as a snapshot of the times.  Then move past that to luxuriate in the beautiful passages in the book.  (I deducted 1 star for this)
  The reader becomes absorbed in Rawlings' love of the land and the creation of a home.  It gives much the same feelings as A Year in Provence or Under a Tuscan Sun
  