[3][4] Rawlings's editor was Maxwell Perkins, who also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other literary luminaries.

A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock.

(While the Forresters are presented as a disreputable clan, the disabled youngest brother, Fodder-Wing, is a close friend to Jody.)

Jody struggles with strained relationships, hunger, death of beloved friends, and the capriciousness of nature through a catastrophic flood.

Throughout, the well-mannered, God-fearing Baxters and the good folk of nearby Volusia and the "big city," Ocala, are starkly contrasted with their hillbilly neighbors, the Forresters.

As Jody takes his final steps into maturity, he is forced to make a desperate choice between Flag and his family.

The parents realize that the growing Flag is endangering their survival, as he persists in eating the corn crop on which the family is relying for food the next winter.

After an ill-conceived attempt to reach an older friend in Boston while traveling in a broken-down canoe, Jody is picked up by a mail ship and returned to Volusia.

In the end, Jody comes of age, assuming increasingly adult responsibilities in the difficult "world of men", but always surrounded by the love of family.

The 1983 film Cross Creek, about Rawlings and the incident that inspired the novel, starred Mary Steenburgen, Rip Torn, Peter Coyote and Dana Hill.

Visitors can hike the Yearling Trail and pass the sites where the homes were and the now dry sinkhole, and pay respects at the Long Family Cemetery.