Literary Fiction · DarkThe Joad family leaves Oklahoma for California
The Grapes of Wrath
A family of Oklahoma tenant farmers loses its land and sets out for California
The Joads are tenant farmers in Oklahoma. They lose their land to drought, economic hardship and bank foreclosures during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. They head west along Route 66 to California in search of work and a better future, along with thousands of other migrants.
More about this book
Who
Tom Joad; Ma and Pa Joad; Jim Casy, a former preacher; Uncle John; Rose of Sharon; and the rest of the Joad family.
World
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, from Oklahoma to California along Route 66.
What makes it different
It grew out of The Harvest Gypsies, a seven-article series Steinbeck wrote for the San Francisco News in 1936. It won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, was cited in Steinbeck's Nobel Prize in 1962, and became a 1940 film directed by John Ford.
Feel
Serious and moving, an account of a hard journey.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Behind the book
The novel grew out of The Harvest Gypsies, a seven-article series Steinbeck wrote for the San Francisco News in October 1936 about migrant workers in California agriculture.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- The Grapes of WrathWikipedia