He dedicated himself to very simple jobs: tailor, secretary of a judge, storekeeper in a mine, and worker at the Ministry of Public Works.

In his work La Marqueza de Yolombó, Carrasquilla described how the most simple people of the end of the 18th century saw the events that broke the Colombia's political dependence on Spain.

He was also a citizen of the once-called United States of Colombia (1863–1886), a time when the Paisa Region saw the colonization of the current coffee areas.

Those books were set in the context of the civil war of 1876, started by the Conservative partisans of Antioquia, Cauca and Tolima against the Liberal government of president Aquileo Parra, who intended to secularize the education.

In 1896, Carrasquilla traveled to Bogotá for the publication of his first novel, Frutos de Mi Tierra ("Fruits of my Land"), written to demonstrate that any subject can be the matter of a story, which was very well received by critics.

The traditional details of the simple folk and the descriptions of scenery in his work are characteristic of Costumbrismo, which was developed in Spain and Latin America during the 19th century.

According to Federico de Onís, Carrasquilla knew, and even shared, the new tendencies of Modernism; for example, he gave support to Los Panidas, but kept his own style and originality.

[9] Strictly speaking, he was always an independent writer, and his biggest merit and originality manifest themselves in his ability to remain free from direct imitation of any influence, although all those he received are latent in his work.In this sense, the classification of Carrasquilla as a Costumbrista is not exact.

Hadn't the Canadian professor Kurt Levy wrote a critic biography of him,[nb 2] far fewer people would today remember the Colombian writer and his most notorious novels according with his critics: La Marquesa de Yolombó, Frutos de mi tierra and a great part of his short stories.

Don Tomás Carrasquilla was a writer able to harvest simple and straightforward anecdotes from everyday life, and to transform them in perplexing, intense and beautiful stories.

He was a master of detail, of description in filigree, of the appropriated word, with the advantage of knowing how to maintain the constant interest of the reader.

Ironic, sometimes merciless, tender when it was fit and owner of that indispensable intensity to transform an ordinary story into a minded and thrilling narrative.If there is one thing that proves that Carrasquilla was more than a Costumbrist, and that he used elements of realistic modernism in his work, it is his intellectual relationship and great friendship with the Fernando González Ochoa, the filósofo de Otraparte ("Philosopher from somewhere else").

39 years apart in age, González knew Carrasquilla at the time he was founding Los Panidas with Rendón and De Greiff in Medellín .

Especially since 1936, with the recognition of the National Prize of Literature and Science, his work attracted the attention of foreign literary critics, like the Chileans Arturo Torres Rioseco and Mariano Latorre.

In the story, Toñito, the youngest child at home, is cared by his nana, Frutus, who used to talk to him about the art of witchcraft—something that made a great impression on the boy.

The boy decided to have his own adventures using his nana's informal lessons, and wound up in terrible trouble that his father arranged with a strong punishment.