The secret river

"Before she settled in the scrub country, Marjorie Rawlings had been a newspaperwoman in Louisville Kentucky, and Rochester New York. Tiring of a life that seemed "scrappy and always in a hurry," she turned her hand unsuccessfully to short-story writing. She had almost given up when, at 32, she used a small legacy to buy her 72-acre orange grove at Cross Creek. The people and the country inspired her to continue writing. Increasingly, her fiction reflected her deepening knowledge of her chosen patch of earth. Two prizewinning stories were followed by two highly praised novels; her third novel, The Yearling, won its author a Pulitzer Prize and a delighted following the world over." - The Editors of Time