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2007 Book Selection: |
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Penguin Press
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Can a book top the bestseller list, win a Pulitzer
Prize, save lives, and still be underrated? If that book is The Grapes of
Wrath, the answer is most definitely yes. For too long, Steinbeck's
masterpiece has been taught as social history, or dismissed as an "issue novel."
It's both these things, of course, but before all that, it's a terrific story.
The characters fall in love, go hungry, lose faith, kill, live, and die with an
immediacy that makes most contemporary novels look somehow dated by comparison.
The novel begins with young Tom Joad's return home from a prison term to find his family's Oklahoma farmstead in ruins and deserted. He soon locates his relatives nearby, preparing to leave their land for the promise of a new life in California. We follow their travails and partake of their hopes, only to share in their disappointment when California's agricultural bounty makes no provision for them except as occasional day laborers. Under the strain, the Joad family gradually comes apart until only a struggling remnant survives. In an unforgettable conclusion, we leave these few bereft of everything except their imperishable humanity. To read more visits: http://www.neabigread.org/books/grapesofwrath/grapes02_intro.php
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