ross Creek is essentially nonfiction, C although it is carefully shaped and is written with as much of an eye to literary values as any of Rawlings's fiction. All of the people and places depicted in the book are real, and Rawlings uses their real names. Rawlings is herself the central figure in the book, which consists of a series of separable episodes occurring in and near her orange grove at Cross Creek.

The book jacket for the first edition accurately notes, "Here are brilliant and fascinating descriptions of the Florida scenery, the orange groves, the swamps, the scattered homesteads, and of the animals and reptiles of the region. The reader sees, and knows, Cross Creek in every season of the year . . . these are all real people, headed by the author herself." Although Cross Creek proper contains only five white families and two black families, other characters come...