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Memoirs

THE LIFE SHE WISHED TO LIVE

Ann McCutchan

A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling

A comprehensive and engaging biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize winning author of the classic The Yearling.

Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn - much less one that has become synonymous with Floridian literature writ large. Rawlings was a tough, passionate, and independent woman who refused the early-twentieth-century conventions of her upbringing. Determined to exist outside her comfort zone, she found her voice in the remote hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. Between hunting alligator and managing an orange grove, Rawlings employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life an unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail - a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Rawlings, her contemporaries - including her legendary editor Maxwell Perkins and friends Zora Neale Hurston and Ernest Hemingway - and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her. Ann McCutchan is the author of five books of memoir, essay, and biography. The founding director of the University of Wyoming's MFA in creative writing program and former editor of American Literary Review, McCutchan grew up in Florida and now lives in Wyoming.

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Book Published 2021-02-23 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

An affectionate biography of the beloved author... Work by work, McCutchan carefully details Rawlings's gradual development as a professional writer who keenly absorbed [Cross Creek, Florida's] history, culture, and dialects... An all-inclusive and intimate assessment that could help Rawlings attract a new generation of readers.

McCutchan, author of several books and a lyricist and librettist, has a graceful style enlivened by glints of wry humor... The book re-creates the lush tropicality of north-central Florida in the 1930s and 1940s, before developers began to bulldoze over its natural wonders. And readers get a penetrating look at one driven writer's work process. Read more...

It's been a quarter of a century since we've had a new biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Ann McCutchan delivers. From Rawlings's early newspaper days to the triumph of The Yearling, McCutchan shows us a writer of complexity, ambition, and conviction. A deeply researched and satisfying read.

An absorbing, affectionate and long overdue portrait... the biography that Rawlings has long deserved. Read more...

Rawlings cleared her path through life as though armed with a machete; McCutchan, gracefully, records every chop. Read more...

In Ann McCutchan's welcome biography, we follow Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's evolution as a writer, glimpse her friendships with writers as various as Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, Margaret Mitchell and Zora Neale Hurston, and witness her vibrant literary life. Most striking is the fascinating account, unearthed from letters, of Rawlings' personal struggle against what we would now call racist consciousness and her evolution as an ally of early 20th century struggles for social justice.

The complexities of Rawlings' massive inner insecurities and her outward, outsized personality make for a compelling and thoughtful biography.