Cross Creek is a series of sketches in which Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings describes characters, daily life, and memorable events at Cross Creek during the decade and a half that she had spent there. Even though this book is autobiographical, it is not arranged chronologically. Instead, it is organized according to the subjects suggested in the chapter titles. Sometimes, a title is the name of a person, such as “The Widow Slater,” or of an event, such as “The Pound Party.” At other times, it is as vague but suggestive as “Our Daily Bread,” which turns out to be about food and cookery, one of the author’s passions. Near the end of the book, there are four chapters on the seasons, followed by “Hyacinth Drift,” which is an account of an almost mystical experience in nature, and then Rawlings’ conclusion, which discusses the relationship between human beings and their natural surroundings.

In many ways, Cross Creek has the quality of a travel book, in which a writer travels to an unfamiliar place, observes people who are considered foreign, and describes their way of life. There is much information in the work: Rawlings writes accurately of dwelling places, food, folkways, customs, and local flora and fauna. Furthermore, like a good travel writer, she adds human interest, recording conversations and local stories, as well as giving firsthand accounts of events as comical as her encounter with trespassing pigs and as dramatic as the struggle of orange growers against a killing frost.

Yet Rawlings differs from most travel writers because she did not merely visit Cross Creek; instead, she moved there to establish a home. Therefore, her discoveries have a personal significance as well as a general interest. Rather than merely observing a community, Rawlings learned to become a part of it.

Cross Creek consists of twenty-three chapters; some, like the first and last, are essentially thoughtful essays; others, like '"Geechee" or "Hyacinth Drift," are self-contained sketches, virtually short stories, of a particular character or event. (Some had been published separately, including "Hyacinth Drift," printed in Scribner's in 1933.) Rawlings narrates in the first person, and the person speaking is clearly Rawlings herself; on occasion, as Samuel Bellman has noted, she uses first person plural: "we of the Creek." Rawlings's greatest difficulty in completing the book was in making it a unified whole rather than simply a collection of short pieces. Her own persona, which is always present and is thoughtful and humane, is the chief unifying element, although lesser devices assist.

As in most of her Florida writings, Rawlings is interested in showing the people of her chosen region (the north central Florida area around Orange Lake) as interesting, generally admirable people. She shows only occasional interest in reforming anything about them, and approaches them — white "crackers" and blacks — gently, generously, and with good humor.

Cross Creek certainly resembles Thoreau's Walden (1854) in its depiction of an educated person withdrawing to a simple, rural place in order to think and write. Too, there is close interest in plants and animals, and a conscious pleasure in the simplicity and honesty of things rural and agrarian. Rawlings mentions Thoreau in Cross Creek, and Bigelow finds close similarities between the two books. Like Walden, Cross Creek may be seen as part of a vast tradition of "rural withdrawal" literature going back to Virgil. Additionally, although Rawlings may not have been familiar with the book, William Bartram's Travels (1791) is an important early literary expression of the concept of Florida as a rather benignly luxuriant, Edenic place filled with interesting plants and animals.

The most obviously related title...