A book about Cross Creek had long been germinating in Rawlings's mind. In a November 5, 1935 letter to her Scribner editor, Maxwell E. Perkins, Rawlings writes:
There is one Florida book that will surely be done. I don't know how soon. One I had thought would not be possible because I had not done it when the material struck me freshly. Yet mellowness, not freshness, is the requisite. It will be non-fiction, called "Cross Creek: a Chronicle." It will not be a confluent narrative, (for the reason that I do not wish to write my personal story) but made up into chapters . . . It will be quiet in tone as anyone could wish for! . . . . Some of the material has been done several years, needing re-writing, of course. Sketches, stories, narratives, essays, laid here at the Creek, done with no special use in mind. But all with a certain, what shall I say, out of the world flavor, catching, I hope, the quality that has made me cling so desperately and against great odds to this place. (Perkins and Rawlings 231)
In 1942, Rawlings finally published Cross Creek, which, unlike the fictional The Yearling, is loosely based on her life and the life of her neighbors at Cross Creek in the Ocala National Forest. But an autobiography was something Rawlings tried to avoid doing when she wrote Cross Creek. In 1941, in a letter to her publisher Max Perkins, she writes: "I wanted [Cross Creek] objective, the only subjectivity consisting of my personal reaction to the Creek, its natural aspects and its people." Rawlings wrote Cross Creek not to center around a person, but around the land and its people. As a result, the story doesn't follow one person or one object. Again, she writes to Max Perkins: "There was no one hook on which to hang anything approximating a story." That is why Rawlings describes Cross Creek as a "consecutive chain of events." It isn't a straight narrative following the normal patterns of a novel. Cross Creek consists of several short stories centered around the land. She describes the stories that she tells about the people as "individual character studies." She wrote and rewrote chapters until she felt that they worked. Rawlings also inquired to her publisher about using real names in the novel. She even went as far as to ask a few neighbors if they would mind her using them in her book.
When Cross Creek was published in 1942, the reaction to it was both positive and negative. For example, the material published in the book dealing with food became so popular among readers that Rawlings published Cross Creek Cookery, a cookbook expanding the chapters concerning the foods of Cross Creek.
The University of Florida awarded Rawlings a Doctor of Humane Letters degree. But the negative reaction to the novel proved lengthy and troublesome. Zelma Cason sued her for invasion of privacy in the amount of $100,000 for publishing details about her life without consent. After a five-and-a-half year trial, the Florida State Supreme Court ruled that Rawlings would have to pay Zelma $1.00 plus court costs.
Unfortunately, Rawlings did not long live afterwards; she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on December 14, 1953. But the literature she left behind created a legacy in her wake. During World War Two, a soldier wrote to Rawlings saying that in Cross Creek, she is "writing about the simple things for which we in the Army are fighting." Even today, Cross Creek is about the simple life for which we strive and the place about which we dream.
