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Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's memoirs of a sojourn in the Florida backwoods during the 1930s provide the loose basis of this film. Mary Steenburgen plays the author of The Yearling, who retreats to the wilderness to observe the locals and renew herself creatively. Unfortunately, it's all very pretty and pasteurized, though Rip Torn does a decent job as redneck Marsh Turner. Steenburgen's then real-life husband, Malcolm McDowell, is good as famed book editor Maxwell Perkins in an brief part. Alas, this uninspired, perfunctory literary bio isn't saved by its handsome visuals.