I have read this book twice before, once as a child, and again as a young adult. It was presented as the MOD choice on the group "On the Southern Literary Trail" by Tom, so I took the opportunity to start the New Year with a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that I already knew would be a wonderful read. I had forgotten just how great it really was.
The setting is Florida in the 1870's, before concrete and condos and retirees and tourists. Before Disney World and Universal and Gatorland. This was a Florida of wild, lush beauty, wild game aplenty to supplement meager farming, but also bears and wolves and rattlesnakes, and violent storms. The Florida Crackers that Rawlings knew so well were proud, hard-working people that only asked for help from neighbors when there was no other choice, and gave help in turn when it was needed.
The description of this book would have you believe that it's the story of a young boy who adopts a fawn, and while this is true, the real story is the relationship between a boy and his father. It's about the struggle to become a man in a hard world, the difficulty of doing the right thing, or even knowing what the right thing is at times. As Penny tells his son Jody, "Boy, life goes back on you. Life knocks a man down and he gets up and it knocks him down agin. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on."
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has written a book about the people she lived among and loved, the values they held dear, and the Florida scrub country that she described so beautifully. The dialect in the book is so real it reads like poetry. I found myself reading parts of it aloud just to hear it spoken.
Yes, this book is a classic in more ways than one. The nature writing is unsurpassed, the story is timeless, the characters will stay in your heart forever. We all need this book for the message. Stand up to life, do what needs to be done, but remember to remain a decent human being.
There just copy this and you should be okay
