Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

One of the twentieth century's most intriguing and complicated literary friendships was that between Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. In death, their reputations have reversed, but in the early 1940s Rawlings had already achieved wild success with her best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Yearling, while Hurston had published Their Eyes Were Watching God to unfavorable critical reviews.

When they met, both were at the height of their literary powers. Hurston appe...