The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling

Novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953) proves to be an elusive subject in McCutchan’s comprehensive if bloodless latest (after Where’s the Moon). Using Rawlings’s letters, drafts, and memoirs, McCutchan attempts to show how the writer “created the life she wished to live as a writer with a poetic, philosophical impulse toward art-making.” Born in Washington, D.C., Rawlings adored her father and had a troubled relationship with her mother. After college, she pursued journalism and moved to Florida, where she ran an orange grove and was described by her second husband as three people, one “prim,” one an “absolute bawd,” and one a “hard-working writer.” Her first novel, South Moon Under, received “glowing reviews” when it was published in 1933, though it wasn’t until the success of The Yearling in 1938 that she achieved fame. McCutchan poignantly captures how Rawlings’s friendship with Zora Neale Hurston sensitized her to her own racism, and how Rawlings’s growing passion for racial equality put her at odds with her neighbors. But while readers see the facts of her life through the “freewheeling ’20s” as she falls into alcoholism, McCutchan isn’t able to get into the head or heart of her subject, leaving it vague as to what drove and tormented her. Those new to Rawlings’s work will find it admirably researched, but this glimpse into a consequential writer’s life will leave readers wanting. (Apr.)