Thanks for mentioning Rawlings. Never heard of that author but I’ll look up that name.
If you want to enjoy Rawlings, I would highly recommend the reference book, Whistlin’ Dixie: A Dictionary of Southern Expressions, by Robert Hendrickson. This is because Rawlings works are packed with regional southeast idioms as well as more general southern expressions that are archaic.
I would recommend that book on its own, as well. I am familiar with one of the regional southern dialects, and was impressed at how alien even adjacent southern idioms sounded to me.
In the mid-1960s I was introduced to a master of American language, who could chat with a person for a minute or so, and tell from their language where they had been raised in the US to within 50 miles. He was also clear that within just a year or two, the American tongue was becoming so homogeneous that he would no longer be able to do this. But it left a lasting impression.