"[Rawlings is] among the first ten American story writers today."—The New Republic, 1940"She will help to make the American short story a living part of our literature."—Boston Transcript, 1940"One of the two or three sui generis storytellers we have."—Atlantic Monthly, 1940In The Yearling, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1939, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the bleak but noble life of the Florida Cracker into American hearts.  She secured her popularity as a storyteller and her status as a major voice in American literature in 1942 with the instant success of Cross Creek, the autobiographical vignettes that highlight her ability to create short fiction. Still, no assessment of the full range and power of her talent has been possible without this volume of all twenty-three of her published short stories, collected together here for the first time.  Most appeared in Scribner's Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. Scribner's printed Rawlings's first short story, "Cracker Chidlings," in 1931, just three years after she moved to an orange grove in the backwoods of north-central Florida.  With a mix of frontier morality, ingenuity, and humor, the story introduced readers to Fatty Blake's squirrel pilau and 'Shiner Tim's corn liquor.  Just as important, it brought her work to the attention of Maxwell Perkins, the famous Scribner's editor, who recognized her talent for storytelling and her eye for detail and who encouraged her to capture human drama in more "Cracker" stories. Though Rawlings was at home in a man's world, much of her short fiction is told in a woman's voice.  She is merciless in "Gal Young 'Un" as she bores in on two women, both competing for the same man and struggling for their dignity.  The story, published in