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Where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Wrote The Yearling Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, a former newspaperwoman, came to Banner Elk seeking coolness, peace, and quiet. She rented one of four cottages owned by Lees-McRae College and stayed several months working on her novel, The Yearling. The story, set in Florida where Rawlings was living, is about a backwoods boy and a deer. The book became a best-seller, won a Pulitzer Prize, and was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck. While in Banner Elk, Rawlings got to know a young boy from the Grandfather Home for Children next to the college who came to help her with chores. The boy inspired her most famous short story, "Mother in Manville," about an orphanage child who imagined a family. A retired Lees-McRae English professor who met Rawlings says that she kept mostly to herself in Banner Elk. "No one knew her well," says the woman, who asks that her name not be used. "She was just another person around writing. We had many." The four cottages on the campus were originally built for a music camp, and two of them later were torn down. The two that remain are used as residences by college maintenance workers. No one can remember which cottage Rawlings stayed in, and no markers have been erected to note her stay. The two remaining cottages are between the college gym and the children's home.
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