Tobacco Road is a novel written by Erskine Caldwell. The novel was first published in 1932, set in the rural Georgia which the author knew well. It features the memorable (if not entirely pleasant) character Jeeter Lester as well as his wife, Ada, his son Dude and Dude’s wise Bessie and, most controversially, Jeeter’s 15 year old married daughter Pearl and her husband Lov. Jeeter’s other daughter, the harelipped Ellie May, is also integral to the narrative.
Although at the time considered somewhat notorious, the novel is actually an example of 1930 's social melodrama. It is highly regarded and usually considered Caldwell's finest achievement. The novel was highly influenced by the early years of the Great Depression with its focus on economic inequality, the suffering of the poor, the effects of poverty and the alienation of those on the lowest rung of the social ladder.
As if trying to replicate the patterns of its characters, the novel is written in spare and simple language. This effect is achieved by using mostly declarative sentence is even in description as well as dialogue. In this sense, Tobacco road is perhaps more accessible than other well-known novels detailing the misery of the Great Depression. Most notably of course, being John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Tobacco Road was Caldwell’s third novel. The novel was optioned for film adaptation by David F. Zanuck and 20th Century Fox shortly after their success with another Georgia-based novel, Gone with the Wind. That was seven years after the novel had enjoyed great success as a stage adaptation. The film version could not quite keep that same tone as the novel and with the controversial subject matter, it is considered one of the less successful adaptations of the period.
Nevertheless Tobacco Road has enjoyed some notoriety outside the medium of novel. In the very first television production by RCA in 1936, an excerpt was read from the novel, thus giving it a place in television history as well as literary history.
