When dust storms and the banks push tenant farmers off the land in Oklahoma, the Joad family loads everything onto a battered truck and joins thousands heading west. Tom Joad, newly paroled from prison, returns home just in time to go with them, along with his resilient mother, his grandparents and a former preacher, Jim Casy, who has lost his faith but not his conscience.
California turns out to be no promised land. Handbills advertising jobs have drawn far more workers than there is work, wages are pushed down, and migrants are herded into squalid camps and treated with suspicion by locals and police. The family's journey is a steady test of endurance and solidarity, and Ma Joad becomes its moral centre.
Steinbeck alternates the family narrative with short interchapters that zoom out to the wider exodus, the car salesmen, the roadside diners and the tractors flattening farmhouses. The novel caused outrage when it appeared and was banned in places, but it won the Pulitzer Prize and helped shape national awareness of migrant labour, corporate farming and economic injustice.
Book details
| Author | John Steinbeck |
|---|---|
| First published | 1939 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Classic |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 464 |
| Setting | Oklahoma, Route 66 and California's farm valleys, 1930s |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for the Novel 1940, National Book Award 1939 |
Themes
- Poverty
- Migration
- Family
- Labour exploitation
- Collective solidarity
Who should read it
Readers who want a sweeping social novel about hardship, dignity and the human cost of economic collapse.