Publisher's Synopsis
Poetic, evocative, and savage, this Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel (1934) depicts a white, middle-class urban family that becomes dirt-poor farmers as a result of the Depression and the great drought of the 1930s. The novel moves through the seasons of a single year--and at the same time, a decade of years--from the spring arrival of the family to winter ten years later, when they have faced the ravages of drought, fire, and personal anguish. Like Ethan Frome, the story evokes the torment possible among people isolated and driven by powerful--but unexpressed--feelings of love and hate.