The Yearling is the 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings about a Florida boy and his pet fawn.
Published in 1938, the novel centers on Jody Baxter, a boy growing up with his parents in the Florida backwoods after the American Civil War. Jody adopts an orphaned fawn named Flag, but caring for the animal creates practical and emotional conflicts for the Baxter family.
Rawlings drew on her life and observations in rural Florida, where she lived at Cross Creek. The novel’s setting, wildlife, family relationships, and coming-of-age story helped establish it as a major work of regional American literature.
The book is sometimes confused with Cross Creek, Rawlings’s 1942 autobiographical work about her Florida home. Cross Creek was not the Pulitzer-winning novel; The Yearling received the Fiction prize in 1939. The story was also adapted into a 1946 film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman.