book review grapes of wrath

Book review: “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck

In 1962, John Steinbeck was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the committee that chose him described his novel The Grapes of Wrath as “a great work” and cited it as one of the main reasons for the honor.

A few years later, everyone in an American high school seemed to be reading the book, as I was, and most, like me, were deeply moved by the harsh and tragic lives that the Joad family and other Okies in California were forced to endure.  This gut-grabbing story-telling took our breath away.  The book, published in 1939, was called a Great American Novel.

More than half a century later, I’ve re-read the book and found Steinbeck’s writing, in many places, powerful and even beautiful.  Yet, I’ve come away from the experience disappointed, even chagrined.

More than half a century later, the book seems to be a well-written piece of propaganda.

 “Fat, sof’ fella”

What I look for in literature is subtlety and nuance, hints rather than hammer-blows, ambiguity, a sense of the mystery of life and human beings.

The Grapes of Wrath is filled with hammer-blows and a clear-cut delineation between the good (the Okies) and the bad (Californians, in general, particularly the rich and the police).

As the Joads are told just before they enter California by a guy who’s going in the other direction:

“People gonna have a look in their eye.  They gonna look at you an’ their face says, ‘I don’t like you, you son-of-a-bitch.’ Gonna be deputy sheriffs, an’ they’ll push you aroun’….You gonna see in people’s face how they hate you.  An’— I’ll tell you somepin.  They hate you ‘cause they’re scairt.  They know a hungry fella gonna get food even if he got to take it.”

This guy goes on, and he gets around to talking about a newspaper magnate who owns millions of acres, even though he doesn’t use them much.

“Got guards ever’place to keep folks out.  Rides aroun’ in a bullet-proof car.  I seen pitchers of him.  Fat, sof’ fella with little mean eyes an’ a mouth like an ass-hole.”

So much for subtlety.

Haves and have-nots

As an idealistic teenager in the 1960s, this stuff seemed clear and honest truth-speaking.  After all, there was something saintly about so many of the characters — from Ma, to Tom, to Jim Casy, the former preacher who becomes a stand-in for Jesus, particularly in the scene in which he gives himself up to the deputies (in Tom’s place) although sinless himself.

In the half century since then, I’ve learned over and over that life is filled with shadings.  You may not like Donald Trump, but, at one point in his life, he was an innocent baby.  You may admire Pope Francis for his focus on treating the poor as full human beings, but he admits, over and over, that he, like any of us, is a sinner.

There’s a term that’s come up in the last decade or two, elevator speech.  It means: Sum up your book-idea-plan-whatever in just enough words that could be said during an elevator ride.  People have asked me to tell them the elevator speech about the book I’ve been writing about Chicago’s elevated Loop. That’s fair enough since mine is a non-fiction book (even though the request rankled me since my story about the Loop is much more complex than can be captured in a few sentences).

To my mind, an elevator speech is out of the question when it comes to a great work of literature.

Can you give me an elevator speech about Moby Dick (“Well, there’s the big whale, and this captain that’s obsessed with killing it…”) or King Lear (“This king divides up his kingdom, sparks wars and goes mad, and then dies”) or David Copperfield (“A boy is born and lots of bad stuff happens to him and a lot of people around him.”)?

In Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath , the elevator speech is easy enough:  The have-nots (the good poor people driven off their land by the Dustbowl) go to California willing to work hard but get crushed by the haves (the bad, unfeeling, greedy rich people and their henchmen).

Yes, the poor in the 1930s and the poor today — and, in fact, the poor throughout history — have been crushed by social, political and government systems that favor the rich.

Yes, there should be more income equality.  The huge wealth gap between the very rich and most of the rest of the nation’s people today is evil.  Greater balance is needed.

As a journalist, I spent a career writing about all that.  And The Grapes of Wrath could almost be called something like journalism, except Steinbeck doesn’t seek the balance in reporting that I and my colleagues strove for.

Indeed, his novel is very much like The Jungle , the 1906 novel about the oppression and exploitation of the poor in the Chicago Stockyards, written by Upton Sinclair, who was a journalist.

Neither novel has a hint of ambiguity.  Anything bad that might have happened to one of Chicago’s poor immigrants happened to the Lithuanian-born Jurgis Rudkus and his family.  Similarly, anything bad that might have happened to any Okie happened to someone in the Joad family.

Everything is very clear cut, good or evil.

And both novels overtly push socialism as the solution to the woes of the workers.

By contrast, Richard Wright’s Native Son , published in the same year as The Grapes of Wrath , also ends with a call for socialism, but it’s a much better novel.

Bigger Thomas, the central character, is no saint.  He’s angry and violent, a flawed person, but one whose humanity shines through his flaws.  His victimization is much more complex — and more true to the life that we live.

Making a point

This is why, while re-reading The Grapes of Wrath , I kept finding myself getting angry at Steinbeck for writing propaganda.

That’s fine.  This book, for the first time, brought to the consciousness of Americans the difficult lives that the Okies were living.  It got people talking, debating, thinking.

That’s good.  But it’s not literature.

Steinbeck was seeking to manipulate his readers.  They were (1) to identify with the good and saintly Joads, (2) to feel how horrible and tragic it was to be oppressed by the powerful and greedy, and (3) to do something about it.

“Push us into fightin’ ”

There was one other way he sought to shape the thinking of the average American — through fear of revolution.  And also by stirring up that revolution.

Often in The Grapes of Wrath , Steinbeck makes the point that all of these Okies, if only they’d unite and work together, could bust the confines around them, could grab what was rightfully (under a kind of natural law) theirs and force the powerful to reckon with them. As Tom tells Ma:

“Did you ever see a deputy that didn’ have a fat ass? An’ they waggle their ass an’ flop their gun around’, Ma, if it was the law they was workin’ with, why, we could take it.  But it ain’t the law.  They’re a-workin’ away at our spirits.  They’re a-trying to make us cringe an’ crawl like a whipped bitch. They’re tryin’ to break us.  Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on’y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin’ a sock at a cop.  They’re workin’ on our decency.”

A few pages later, Steinbeck, in the voice of the narrator, adds this:

“The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.  And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling.  On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food.  And the anger began to ferment.”

And, later, a minor character called Black Hat says:

“They’re getting’ purty mean out there.  Burned that camp an’ beat up folks.  I been thinkin’.  All our folks got guns.  I been thinkin’ maybe we ought to git up a turkey shootin’ club an’ have meetin’s ever’ Sunday.”

And another minor character named Huston says:

“I swear to God they gonna push us into fightin’ if they don’t quit a-worryin’ us.”

Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way.  Maybe I should be thinking of The Grapes of Wrath as a 600-page fable. In a fable, there is good and bad and a moral.

But can a fable be great literature?  A fable is a method of passing along a bit of communal wisdom: Don’t sleep or the turtle will beat you.

A fable is a method a culture uses to describe what, as a group, the culture has decided is good and what is bad.  The hare lost the race, and, in our culture, going back to the Greeks, that’s a bad.

But, in a culture that doesn’t prize competition as much, maybe the hare is doing good by just hanging around and enjoying himself, even to the point of dozing.

In other words, a fable is cultural propaganda.

Whether I think of The Grapes of Wrath as a fable or a novel or reportage, it’s still propaganda.

And, after all my years as a journalist and now my work in writing history, I hate propaganda.

Propaganda is a perversion of the truth.

It looks like the truth, and, in the hands of a master such as Steinbeck, it is very convincing.  But it isn’t the truth.

The truth is that the Okies weren’t all good or saintly, and the Californians weren’t all “ass-holes” or “fat asses.”

The system did oppress the Okies, and people, rich and poor, were part of that system.  Wrongs were done.  No question.

But the reason I love watching King Lear on the stage, the reason I love to read good journalism, the reason I write, is because I love to try to look at the complexities of human life, with all their chaos, with all their lack of clear-cut solutions, and with all their ambiguities.  These are things to ponder, to wonder about, to wrestle with.

There is no ambiguity in propaganda.  There is no ambiguity in The Grapes of Wrath .

Patrick T. Reardon

Written by : Patrick T. Reardon

For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.

All very true, but maybe if you expect less of the novel in terms of nuance and give it more credit as a poweful polemic that was needed to wake up a complacent society then it does its job well. It seems to me that the central messages about the ills of capitalism and the miseries endured by migrants are as relevant today as they were when the book was written. The fact that the book was banned and burned is surely evidence that it hit a very sensitive nerve. What I would like to know is whether it changed conditions for the better at the time. Anyone out there an expert?

Hard no. Steinbeck describes like few have had the ability to do. Yours is to interpret. Take in and then reflect. There are soo many hacks today that it makes this response futile.

Thanks for your comment. A lot of people, including a lot of my friends, see this book as a great piece of literature. Maybe I’m all wet.

Very fair points! I’d never been acquainted with this story until seeing the movie, and I appreciate the perspective!

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We Need to Talk About Books

The grapes of wrath by john steinbeck [a review].

The Grapes of Wrath is one of the more impactful novels of the twentieth century. Though it tells a story of a particular time and place, it has the power to transcend those limitations because the displacement of a desperate people is a story often repeated in human history. Its ability to travel far beyond its narrow circumstances is achieved through the author’s thorough understanding of the causes of this crisis, his method of showing the tragedy on two scales, small and large, simultaneously, and, above all, his empathy and compassion for his subject which he carries through to the reader.   

A truck driver stops to pick up a hitchhiker, a young man in ill-fitting clothes. A little nosy, the truck driver pries into the man’s business. Unconcerned, the man tells the driver that he has just been released from McAlester where he was serving a seven-year sentence for homicide. He’d killed a man with a shovel during a fight at a dance. He was drunk at the time and the other man had a knife. After serving four years, he’s been released for good behaviour. His name is Tom Joad and he’s heading for his father’s 40-acre farm.

The driver takes Tom as far as he can, after which Tom walks barefoot in the thick dust until he comes across a man sitting under a tree.

Jim Casy, is a preacher having a crisis. He says he used to hold meetings, his preaching could inspire people to feel the spirit, but these meetings would inevitably end with him drawing a young woman away from the gathered crowd to have sex with. He says he never meant to, but could not resist temptation, and now, under the burden of guilt, feels himself a hypocrite and has lost his calling. He compares his disillusionment to Jesus in the wilderness.

Tom and Jim walk together to the Joad’s farm, Tom telling family stories. When they come over the hill, the Joad’s house looks abandoned.

Small family farms like the Joad’s were already struggling when faced with increased competition from larger farms using the latest methods including tractors, harvesters and paid workers. In bad years, families like the Joads had been forced to take on debt to survive and hope for better next year. But years of intensive farming practices have left the soil in the region vulnerable to drought. By the 1930’s, severe droughts were causing huge dust storms which ruined what crops were still growing. When the banks came to collect, families which had lived on their own land for generations, who had seen generations born and die on that land, were forced out.

As Tom walks over his father’s deserted farm, nothing seems to make sense. He sees signs of neglect, of sudden abandonment, yet can’t understand why the neighbours haven’t stolen what’s left either. He bumps into a childhood friend, Muley Graves, who explains things to Tom. He tells Tom that his family are staying with Tom’s uncle, chopping cotton until they have enough to buy a car and head out West. It angers Tom that they would leave without a fight. Muley is sympathetic, says he was so angry he wanted to kill people, but the bankers talk pretty, leaving you feeling unsure who to be mad at.

After spending a night in the open, Tom and Jim walk to Tom’s Uncle’s house and are reunited with the rest of the Joads. Tom’s grandparents are there as well as his parents and siblings, including his sixteen-year-old younger brother Al, who has become a quite adept mechanic, and his sister Rose of Sharon who is eighteen, pregnant and married. Altogether, there are fourteen of them plus Jim, not to mention chickens, pigs, dogs and a lot of possessions.

Tom’s mother seems to be in charge of the situation, though she is barely holding together. She stays focused on what is in front of her and by taking one day at a time. But she too is struggling to let go of the land and possessions she treasures and values, though not as much as the men who have turned inert. Tom injects some impetus into his family to allow them to make the final push onto the road that they are all reluctant to make.

In a truck that can barely carry them all, with little money for food or gas, the family pull out onto Route 66 and head for California.

Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66 – the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield – over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide, and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys. 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

But Tom’s Ma already has reservations about what they will find in California. Though there is no shortage of pamphlets promising plenty of work, there is no guarantee, and there is already a huge exodus of people heading West. There is also the fact that Tom will be violating his parole as soon as he leaves the state.

The Joad’s hardship is only beginning. On their journey West they will be pushed to the limits of their endurance but will not be deterred from moving ever onward, mostly because they have no alternative.

The Grapes of Wrath is considered by many to be Steinbeck’s greatest work; a contender in the unending search for the great American novel. It appears on many lists of the greatest novels and was heavily cited by the committee who awarded Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature.

It is not difficult to see why. The novel delves deep into various aspects of the plight of the ‘Okies’; a displaced people in search of a new home. It plunges the reader into the causes of their uprooting; the bankers, buyers and salesmen who take advantage of their situation; the challenges they face on the road from illness, hunger and prejudice, and their hope at finding a life of sustenance and dignity. The novel delivers this with a large amount of empathy and yet is very readable.

Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil. They will last for years. The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. […] There is a crime here the goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

Steinbeck achieves this through the way he has structured the novel. Breaking up the narrative of the exodus of the Joads are individual chapters which do not contribute to the plot but provide microcosms of the world the Joads are travelling through. An example would be one chapter that shows life inside a food stop on the road. Serving coffee, burgers and pies, they make their best business out of the truckdrivers who make the stop. Though the outside world literally drives by them, they can sense something is changing as they increasingly have to put up with ‘shitheels’ like the Joads.

I had mixed feelings about this technique initially as it made what Steinbeck was trying to do a little transparent. But I have to admit these vignettes were perceptive, well-written and powerful. They are not necessarily rigid either, some are rather poetic, some are more free-form, riffing, stream-of-consciousness in style.

In The Grapes of Wrath [Steinbeck] devised a contrapuntal structure, which alternates short lyrical chapters of exposition and background pertinent to the migrants as a group […] with the long narrative chapters of the Joad family’s dramatic exodus to California […]. Just as in Moby Dick Melville created intensity and prolonged suspense by alternating between the temporal chapters of Ahab’s driven quest for the white whale and Ishmael’s numinous chapters on cetology, so Steinbeck structured his novel by juxtaposition. His “particular” chapters are the slow-paced and lengthy narrative chapters that embody traditional characterisation and advance the dramatic plot, while his jazzy, rapid-fire “interchapters” work at another level of recognition by expressing an atemporal, universal, synoptic view of the migrant condition. [These interchapters] were expressly designed to “hit the reader below the belt. With the rhythms and symbols of poetry one can get into a reader – open him up and while he is open introduce things on an intellectual level which he would not or could not receive unless he were opened up.” – From the Introduction

That being said, the plot of The Grapes of Wrath is fairly linear. It meanders a little and escalates in concern for the characters but there is no great twist in store. This too, I think, is Steinbeck’s intention for the story. He wants the reader to share the Joad’s hope and faith and feel anxious for their fate in the face of desperate odds without any sudden change of fortune to excuse or diminish it.

I’ve done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags, I don’t want him satisfied… – John Steinbeck – John Steinbeck

A theme that comes through strongly when reading the novel is the value of community, hospitality and dignity. Despite how much they have lost and the judgement and prejudice they encounter, the Joad’s still experience friendliness and hospitality from strangers on the road. People who help even though they have little themselves. The Joads find this aspect of society to be changing though. Their poverty, their otherness, the sheer number of them, mean that more doors close to them than open. Then there are the newer forces that oppose them – the new farms, the banks, the government. Faceless, inhuman, bureaucratic and imposing in their size and ruthlessness. The Joads and others don’t see the value in their efficiency, only the loss of decency and respect for people.

And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is a life and a vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the length of fibre in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium.

Another theme in the novel is a loss of masculinity. Tom’s father, for example, has not just lost his farm but also lost his identity and reason for living. The shame of no longer being able to be a provider for his family has made him and other men in the novel feel impotent. Feeling depressed about their circumstances, wondering how things might have been different, they lack the flexibility and resolve to act on the situation in front of them and become dead weight to the families moving west. The real source of strength and will are the women like Tom’s mother. Though, this is no foreshadowing of a new era of opportunity. Instead, the women now face a double burden in being both carers and providers for their families, showing the flexibility to take what they can get and the fortitude to take on what they face that many of the men lack.

“I know,” Pa said quietly. “I ain’t no good any more. Spen’ all my time a-thinkin’ how it use’ ta be. Spen’ all my time thinkin’ of home, an’ I ain’t never gonna see it no more.” “This here’s purtier – better lan’,” said Ma. “I know. I never even see it, thinkin’ how the willow’s los’ its leaves now. Sometimes figgerin’ to mend that hole in the south fence. Funny! Woman takin’ over the fambly. Woman sayin’ we’ll do this here, an’ we’ll go there. An’ I don’ even care.” “Woman can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman got all here life in her arms. Man got it all in his head. Don’ you mind. Maybe – well, maybe nex’ year we can get a place.”

The Penguin Modern Classics edition of The Grapes of Wrath that I read has a lengthy introduction by Robert DeMott who has previously served as director for the Centre for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University and seems to have devoted much of his professional life to the study of Steinbeck’s work. Unfortunately, DeMott does not spend much time discussing the themes, messages or symbolism in the novel which was disappointing for me. Except to suggest the novel contains Biblical parallels – a ‘flood’, an exodus, a promised land, a Holy Family, a pregnant young woman on the road – which would be in keeping with the Biblical retelling included in some of Steinbeck’s other work.

Instead, DeMott mostly shares what we can learn about The Grapes of Wrath from Steinbeck’s letters, journals and other source material. He chronicles the development of the novel from Steinbeck’s conception of it, to his research, to the various obstacles he had to overcome – his anger at the plight of the migrating farmers which he had to move past as it did not translate into good writing, his wife’s deteriorating health, the bankruptcy of his publisher and his own nagging self-doubts. He also shares the novel’s impact – on politics and literature but also on Steinbeck himself who felt he could only continue writing if he evolved and did things differently in future.

The Grapes of Wrath attracted a lot of controversy. It is not surprising, given its subject matter, that it would be interpreted politically. I don’t agree with the charge that the novel advocates communism as a solution to what the migrating workers face. Instead, I think the novel contains the message that people in desperate circumstances can find themselves vulnerable to extremist ideologies that offer false hope, convenient scapegoats and routes to power for advocates. In the novel, that vulnerability is exposed to communist ideas in an unsophisticated form. Given the setting and period, it is not an inappropriate iteration – in another setting and period a different ideology may be more appropriate.

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt were ignored.

More recently, the novel has been criticised for its lack of ethnic diversity. Absent from the novel are any Chinese, Japanese, Filipino or Mexican workers who were in California in large numbers at the time. A fact that Steinbeck would have been aware of from his research and his creation, the Joads, would have encountered. There is also the resemblance between The Grapes of Wrath and Whose Names Are Unknown by Sonora Babbs. Steinbeck is widely believed to have read Babbs’ notes for her novel.

The Grapes of Wrath may therefore be one of those novels facing a re-evaluation of some of its aspects with new eyes. Even so, it has an enormous place in literary history. When first published, it was fortunate in that its timing allowed for maximum impact on politics and literature. It became a bestseller, won a Pulitzer Prize, played a large part in Steinbeck winning a Nobel Prize and became a classroom staple. While it is tempting to say that its impact is its greatest achievement, an impact any writer would love to achieve, it is the transmission of sincere empathy from the writer to the reader for a wronged people that The Grapes of Wrath does best and which persists longest.

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Greetings. Even though this review is a year old, I’m still going to nit-pick it. You write…

And you do not provide an antithesis of any form. You simply let these claims lie. Whereas, written quite clearly at the beginning of chapter 19, John Steinbeck writes about these very people and compares their situation to slavery.

Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don’t need much. They wouldn’t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny—deport them. And all the time the farms grew larger and the owners fewer. And there were pitifully few farmers on the land any more. And the imported serfs were beaten and frightened and starved until some went home again, and some grew fierce and were killed or driven from the country. And the farms grew larger and the owners fewer.

Regardless of the quality of the review otherwise, I was a bit annoyed when reading this right after reaching chapter 19.

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Nit-pick away!

I’m sorry if I annoyed you. If I had reread the novel after I became aware of that critique and found that passage, like you I would have been impelled to offer a rebuttal to that criticism. So, thanks for sharing.

Relatedly, even if it were true, I am not convinced of how valid the critique is anyway. I’m ok with a novel about the Okie phenomenon being mostly about the Okies. I am not convinced by the argument that stories need to be everything to everyone or that telling the story of the suffering of one group almost exclusively is somehow diminishing or disrespectful to the suffering of others, like there is some competition to see whose suffering is most deserving of being told. If it is true that some people and issues were underrepresented at the time, then I would argue that the responsibility mostly lay with publishers and the reading public to broaden their range, not with Steinbeck and his novel.

Thanks again for sharing your point.

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Book Review: The Grapes of Wrath

The American Struggle

Tyler Kwong ‘23 , Staff Writer March 1, 2021

I recently read John Steinbeck’s classic, The Grapes of Wrath . The novel takes place during the Midwestern Dust Bowl, in which years of drought caused the land to cake and emit vast amounts of dust, enveloping Middle America. For years, crops fail due to annual droughts, forcing farmers to plant nutrient-guzzling cotton. Crop failures also cause banks to evict families unable to pay off mortgages and rent, while replacing tenants with large industrial tractors, plows, and augers. These machines and technology represent the new era of automation along with the exile of the common man and the displacement of religion. 

The novel follows the impoverished Joad family on their journey from a grey, desolate Oklahoma to the promiseland of California, which is rumored to contain grapes, peaches, and apples all year round. Although moving to California presents the Joads a great opportunity to escape the perpetual cycle of poverty, it also presents a new danger: the unknown.

Steinbeck’s novel is full of vivid and evocative imagery. I enjoyed his chapter interludes, which shed light on the injustices endured by the middle class. My favorite anecdote being the description of a turtle crossing a highway and getting hit by a sadistic truck driver. After being struck, the turtle flips over and continues its perilous journey. The turtle represents the common man and the truck driver large corporations. This anecdote provides the message that no matter how terrible a situation, the common worker still moves forward. It is a powerful message, especially today in a time of so much wealth inequality, stagnation, and political division. 

During my time reading, I felt as if this old America was another world. The lack of phones, electricity, flush toilets, and refrigeration transported me to an unknown time. Steinbeck returns the reader to a time of simplicity and pride, which I find quite refreshing when compared to today’s America. The novel also reminds readers of the blessings in the modern era, such as plentiful food, a more open society, basic hygiene, and better living conditions. Although we have access to technology, it seems that we have become more divided than ever. Steinbeck’s novel serves as a testament that in times of struggle and depression, Americans are still united and will persevere. For those seeking an escape from our technology-connected yet divided world, especially anyone who enjoys history and memoirs, I would certainly recommend this novel.

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Coy Bebber • Jul 23, 2022 at 8:37 am

I read the book, and didn’t like the sudden, sad ending. what about ending the book with a revelation of how the average poor emigrant from the dust bowl finally settled into the California environment?

A.M. Potter • Jun 10, 2022 at 5:36 am

Teachers who use this novel should really incorporate current studies on how the actual migrants from Oklahoma felt about this book and movie. Most hated it and felt it perpetuated a blatantly untrue stereotype of Okies which made their lives even more difficult. I would recommend the study done by Keith Newlin in On The Grapes of Wrath which incorporates actual interviews. For years I’ve been teaching this novel to my creative writing students, using it to demonstrate details and description in setting. Now I will be teaching it to stress the importance of competent research.

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THE GRAPES OF WRATH

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 1939

This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.

Pub Date: April 14, 1939

ISBN: 0143039431

Page Count: 532

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939

GENERAL FICTION

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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by Kristin Hannah

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A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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by Hanya Yanagihara

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Book Review

The grapes of wrath.

• John Steinbeck

• High school and up
• Penguin Classics
• The Grapes of Wrathis a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the New York Public Library's Books of the Century.

Year Published

This drama by John Steinbeck is published by Penguin Classics and is written for adults but is sometimes studied by high school classes.

Plot Summary

Like many farmers living in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, the Joads lose their land and pursue the prospect of a better life in California. With all their possessions loaded in a beat-up truck, they cross the country, experiencing prejudice, poverty, car trouble and frustration. Once in the “Promised Land” of California, they discover thousands like them living in migrant camps, jobless or making pitiful wages. The Joads struggle to stay together, stay alive and maintain a sense of hope and dignity as loss, hunger and unemployment threaten to break their spirits.

Christian Beliefs

Critics have written numerous essays on the biblical symbolism of this book, whose title derives from Revelation 14:19. The Joads (initially 12 of them, like the 12 tribes of Israel) and their companions parallel the downtrodden Hebrews plodding toward Canaan. Former preacher Jim Casy (see other belief systems) sacrifices his life for a cause and makes a “disciple” out of Tom, rendering Jim a Christ figure, despite his unconventional view of holiness. When Tom decides to follow Casy’s lead and aid his fellow man, he quotes Ecclesiastes 4:9-12. The Joads themselves are part of the “holiness” movement, but they use Christ’s name far more often as a curse word than in prayer.

Other Belief Systems

Former preacher Jim Casy tells Tom how he baptized people against their will and took sexual advantage of women he’d just saved. He claims he’s no longer a preacher because he’s lost faith in traditional Christianity. He now believes the acts of simply living and caring for other people give birth to holiness. In the final scene, Rose of Sharon breastfeeds a dying man to save his life. (The nonsexual, nongraphic scene demonstrates the Joads’ respect for life and their fellow man and is meant to symbolize hope.)

Authority Roles

The story begins with the traditional family structure of the day — men make the decisions while women remain silent. By the end, however, Ma has assumed authority over the family and Pa follows like a child. Uncle John, also once a respected family leader, insists that he has to get drunk one night despite the family’s desperate lack of money. The Joad kids pretend to be drunk and mimic him.

As a preacher, Casy abuses the trust of his followers. Later, as a strike leader, he dies for his beliefs. Banks, big businesses and legal authorities in the story all appear corrupt and self-interested.

Profanity & Violence

Steinbeck employs numerous profanities, such as son-of-a-b–ch, d–n, h—, a– and b–tard. He freely uses the Lord’s name in vain. In a descriptive scene, a car hits and mangles the Joads’ dog (symbolic of the suffering that lies ahead for the family). A man bashes in Casy’s head, and Tom avenges Casy by brutally beating the man.

Sexual Content

Tom and Casy engage in a number of crude sexual discussions. (One such conversation begins after the men have witnessed some dogs mating. The description is fairly graphic). Tom sometimes refers to prostitutes he has known, and Casy talks about “screwin’” girls when they were “full of the Sperit [sic].” Steinbeck suggests that Tom’s brother, Al, enjoys frequent sexual relationships with girls he meets in the camps, though he spares readers the details.

Discussion Topics

If your children have read this book or someone has read it to them, consider these discussion topics:

Do you see anything wrong with Casy’s definition of holiness?

Why did John Steinbeck end the book with Rose of Sharon breastfeeding a dying man?

What message was the author trying to send through the imagery?

Steinbeck seems to suggest that other people — not natural disasters, bad decisions or bad luck — are the primary cause of the Joads’ problems. What do you think?

Is there any truth to this idea in our society?

What lessons can we learn from the Joad family’s hospitality and loyalty even in the face of extreme hardship?

Additional Comments

Book reviews cover the content, themes and world-views of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. A book’s inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

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Parents' guide to, the grapes of wrath.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 3 Reviews
• Kids Say 5 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Gritty Steinbeck classic brings Great Depression to life.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about sharecroppers struggling to survive the Great Depression, fleeing the Dust Bowl in Oaklahoma for California, is as harsh and gritty as its time. There's drinking, smoking, swearing, and extramarital sex, and violence stalks the Joad family and their…

Why Age 15+?

It's an appropriately foul-mouthed novel: The curse words, which come fast and h

Tom Joad was imprisoned for killing a man during a fight. A family friend is sla

Several characters smoke and there are references to drinking. One man copes wit

While there are no vivid scenes, sexual references abound. A preacher laments hi

Any Positive Content?

The Great Depression comes vividly to life: Readers get a full picture of the fo

While Ma Joad is obsessed with keeping her family intact, during their journey w

Ma Joad is a pillar of strength, rolling with the punches and adapting family ro

Parents need to know that this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about sharecroppers struggling to survive the Great Depression, fleeing the Dust Bowl in Oaklahoma for California, is as harsh and gritty as its time. There's drinking, smoking, swearing, and extramarital sex, and violence stalks the Joad family and their fellow migrants. But its realism and passion have made it a must-read for generations. Families may want to follow up the book with a viewing of the well-regarded 1940 film version .

It's an appropriately foul-mouthed novel: The curse words, which come fast and heavy, include: "bastard," "goddamn," "damn," "hell," "sons-a-bitches," "asshole," and "bitch." The "N" word is also used a few times.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Tom Joad was imprisoned for killing a man during a fight. A family friend is slain, and Tom kills the assailant. Several characters refer to beating women and children for disobedience, but no such violence is carried out. A woman's hand is shot off and some peripheral characters suffer severe malnutrition and starvation. Many anecdotes focus on violence: a family member gored by a bull, a neighbor's baby eaten by a pig, ancestors who killed Indians, and more. Two elderly relatives in the Joad family die during the journey and a baby is stillborn.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Several characters smoke and there are references to drinking. One man copes with stress and trauma by deliberately getting drunk. The family sedates Old Grampa Joad by mixing a large dose of "soothin' syrup" into his coffee to get him woozy after he refuses to comply with Ma Joad.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

While there are no vivid scenes, sexual references abound. A preacher laments his promiscuity, Al Joad is constantly pursuing women, pregnant Rose of Sharon has surreptitious sex with her fiancé, who later abandons her, and anecdotes refer to animal copulation and "pounding."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Educational Value

The Great Depression comes vividly to life: Readers get a full picture of the forces that shaped the massive migration west and fed growing political, economic, and social tension. The story of the Joad family is a jumping-off point for exploring labor history, economic principles, midcentury politics, and more.

Positive Messages

While Ma Joad is obsessed with keeping her family intact, during their journey west they broaden their sense of family as they make human connections through hardship. Even characters who are struggling to survive generally have compassion for others. In one camp, migrants are treated civilly and organize themselves into a well-run society, even thwarting an attempt by bullying outsiders to cause trouble.

Positive Role Models

Ma Joad is a pillar of strength, rolling with the punches and adapting family roles as needed. The family around her struggle more, but they stay true to their values. Many of their fellow travelers are generous and proud, despite their circumstances, and they encounter a few onlookers who are sympathetic to their struggle.

Where to Read

Parent and kid reviews.

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (5)

Based on 3 parent reviews

A Great Book

There are alternatives..., what's the story.

Tom Joad, paroled after killing a man in a fight, returns to the family homestead in Oklahoma only to find his family gone, forced out as the banks seized failing farms. He and Casy, a former preacher, catch up with and join the family fleeing West to California, lured by tales of good work for good wages. At the center of the story is Ma Joad, surrounded by Pa Joad, his parents, six children, and one future in-law. Money and options are in short supply, but the family gets by with help from strangers. Their arrival in California is bitter: Fruit is left to rot as workers compete for low pay. The surviving Joads scrabble for food, shelter, and work. Even when they have nothing, they still find something to give to a starving man.

Is It Any Good?

This visceral novel succeeds as a gripping story and a piece of history. John Steinbeck, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, alternates chapters following the Joads' saga with poetic interludes detailing the larger forces at work against the migrants. 

Steinbeck, who visited migrant camps to research the book, skillfully illustrates the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots. His sympathies are obviously with the desperate families (to the point where he was accused of communist sympathies), but he treats the comfortable classes with empathy: Lack of knowledge and understanding reinforces suspicion and hatred of the migrants, who for their part can't understand why they're so vilified. It's an important lesson on perspective, and a fantastic starting point for discussing political, economic, and social issues still very relevant today.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the themes of economic disparity and power during the Great Depression and in the decades since. What has changed for the working classes since Steinbeck's novel? What hasn't? How does the conversation today about the haves and have-nots compare with what people were taking about the 1930s?

Steinbeck lays bare the ways prejudices take shape and are reinforced. Consider a group of people subject to discrimination in America today and explore the roots of prejudice against them.

Natural disaster and technological advances combine to cause the massive displacement of the 1930s. Families can discuss more recent disasters that have triggered internal displacement. For example, how has Hurricane Katrina in 2005 changed New Orleans and the country?

Struggling to survive, the migrants stick together. They typically help each other rather than acting in self-interest alone. But in modern survival tales, such as disaster films, survivors often act selfishly, discarding community unless it serves their needs (such as protection). Do you think one depiction is truer to human spirit than the other?

Book Details

• Author : John Steinbeck
• Genre : Historical Fiction
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Penguin Classics
• Publication date : January 8, 2002
• Number of pages : 464
• Last updated : June 15, 2015

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April 16, 1939 John Steinbeck's New Novel Brims With Anger and Pity By PETER MONRO JACK The Grapes of Wrath By John Steinbeck here are a few novelists writing as well as Steinbeck and perhaps a very few who write better; but it is most interesting to note how very much alike they are all writing: Hemingway, Caldwell, Faulkner, Dos Passos in the novel, and MacLeish in poetry are those whom we easily think of in their similarity of theme and style. Each is writing stories and scenarios of America with a curious and sudden intensity, almost as if they had never seen or understood it before. They are looking at it again with revolutionary eyes. Stirred like every other man in the street with news of foreign persecution, they turn to their own land to find seeds of the same destructive hatred. Their themes of pity and anger, their styles of sentimental elegy and scarifying denunciation may come to seem representative of our time. MacLeish’s “Land of the Free,” for instance, going directly to the matter with poetry and pictures--the matter being that the land is no longer free, having been mortgaged, bought and finally bankrupted by a succession of anonymous companies, banks, politicians and courts, or, for the present instance, Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” as pitiful and angry a novel ever to be written about America. It is a very long novel, the longest that Steinbeck has written, and yet it reads as if it had been composed in a flash, ripped off the typewriter and delivered to the public as an ultimatum. It is a long and thoughtful novel as one thinks about it. It is a short and vivid scene as one feels it. The opening scene is in Oklahoma, where a change in the land is taking place that no one understands, neither the single families who have pioneered it nor the great owners who have bought it over with their banks and lawyers. As plainly as it can be put, Mr. Steinbeck puts it. A man wants to build a wall, a house, a dam, and inside that a certain security to raise a family that will continue his work. But there is no security for a single family. The cotton crops have sucked out the roots of the land and the dust has overlaid it. The men from the Bank or the Company, sitting in their closed cars, try to explain to the squatting farmers what they scarcely understand themselves: that the tenants whose grandfather settled the land have no longer the title to it, that a tractor does more work than a single family of men, women and children put together, that their land is to be mechanically plowed under, with special instructions that their hand-built houses are to be razed to the ground. This may read like a disquisition by Stuart Chase. There is, in fact, a series of essays on the subject running through the book, angry and abstract--like the perplexed and figuring." The essayist in Steinbeck alternates with the novelist, as it does with Caldwell and the others. The moralist is as important as the story-teller, may possibly outlast him; but the story at the moment is the important thing. The most interesting figure of this Oklahoma family is the son who has just been released from jail. He is on his way home from prison, hitch-hiking across the State in his new cheap prison suit, picking up a preacher who had baptized him when young, and arriving to find the family setting out for California. The Bank had come “to tractorin’ off the place.” The house had been knocked over by the tractor making straight furrows for the cotton. The Joad family had read handbills promising work for thousands in California, orange picking. They had bought an old car, were on the point of leaving, when Tom turned up from prison with the preacher. They can scarcely wait for this promised land of fabulous oranges, grapes and peaches. Only one stubborn fellow remains on the land where his great-grandfather had shot Indians and built his house. The others, with Tom and the preacher, pack their belongings on the second-hand truck, set out for the new land, to start over again in California. The journey across is done in superb style, one marvellous short story after another, and all melting into this long novel of the great trek. The grandfather dies on the way, and then the grandmother. The son Noah stops at a river and decides to stay there. Without quite knowing it, he is the Thoreau in the family. A fine river, fish to catch and eat, the day and night to dream in: he wants nothing else. The little children have their fun along the road; wise little brats, they are growing up, secret and knowing. Tom and his brother take turns driving the truck, easing her over the mountains, grinding her valves, scraping the plugs: they are the mechanics. The sister, Rosasharn, christened for Rose of Sharon, expects to have her baby. Her husband disappears, aims to better himself in his own selfish way. The Joad family meet people coming and going, going to California from the Western States with hope and the orange handbills and a $75 jalopy; people coming from California embittered and broke, speaking darkly of deputies, double-crossing, 20 cents an hour and labor trouble. Those coming from California are going back to their native Oklahoma, Texas or Arkansas, to die starving in what had once been their homes, rather than die starving in a strange country. Californians are not going to like this angry novel. The Joad family drive over the mountains, through the desert, the great valley, through Tehacapi in the morning glow-- “Al jammed on the brake and stopped in the middle of the road. * * * The vineyards, the orchards, the great flat valley, green and beautiful, the trees set in rows, and the farm houses.” And Pa said, “God Almighty!” The distant cities, the little towns in the orchard land, and the morning sun, golden on the valley. . . . The grain fields golden in the morning, and the willow lines, the eucalyptus trees in rows. . . . Pa sighed, “I never knowed they was anything like her,”--silent and awestruck, embarrassed before the great valley, writes Mr. Steinbeck, of even the children. The beauty and fertility of California conceal human fear, hatred and violence. “Scairt” is a Western farmer’s word for the inhabitants, frightened of the influx of workers eager for jobs, and when they are frightened they become vicious and cruel. This part of the story reads like the news from Nazi Germany. Families from Oklahoma are known as “Okies.” While they work they live in what might as well be called concentration camps. Only a few hundred are given jobs out of the thousands who traveled West in response to the handbills. Their pay is cut from 30 cents an hour to 25, to 20. If any one objects he is a Red, an agitator, a trouble-maker who had better get out of the country. Deputy sheriffs are around with guns, legally shooting or clubbing any one from the rest of the Union who questions the law of California. The Joad family find only one place of order and decency in this country of fear and violence, in a government camp, and it is a pleasure to follow the family as they take a shower bath and go to the Saturday night dances. But even here the deputy sheriffs, hired by the banks who run the Farmers Association, are poking in their guns, on the pretext of inciting to riot and the necessity of protective custody. The Joad family moves on through California, hunted by anonymous guns while they are picking peaches for 2 1/2 cents a box, hoping only for a little land free of guns and dust on which they might settle and work as they were accustomed to. The promised grapes of California have turned into grapes of wrath that might come to fruition at any moment. How true this may be no reviewer can say. One may very easily point out that a similar message has been read by the writers mentioned above, and that Mr. Steinbeck has done the same thing before. It is easy to add that the novel comes to no conclusion, that the preacher is killed because he is a strikebreaker, that Tom disappears as a fugitive from California justice, that the novel ends on a minor and sentimental note; that the story stops after 600 pages merely because a story has to stop somewhere. All this is true enough but the real truth is that Steinbeck has written a novel from the depths of his heart with a sincerity seldom equaled. It may be an exaggeration, but it is the exaggeration of an honest and splendid writer. Return to the Books Home Page