God's Little Acre: A Novel

by Erskine Caldwell

Overview

Like Tobacco Road, this novel chronicles the final decline of a poor white family in rural Georgia. Exhorted by their patriarch Ty Ty, the Waldens ruin their land by digging it up in search of gold. Complex sexual entanglements and betrayals lead to a murder within the family that completes its dissolution. Juxtaposed against the Waldens' obsessive search is the story of Ty Ty's son-in-law, a cotton mill worker in a nearby town who is killed during a strike.

First published in 1933, God's Little Acre was censured by the Georgia Literary Commission, banned in Boston, and once led the all-time best-seller list, with more than ten million copies in print.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820316635
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	02/01/1995
Series:	Brown Thrasher Books Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	393,624
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

ERSKINE CALDWELL (1903-1987) was born in Newnan, Georgia. He became one of America's most widely read, prolific, and critically debated writers, with a literary output of more than sixty titles. At the time of his death, Caldwell's books had sold eighty million copies worldwide in more than forty languages. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1984.

ERSKINE CALDWELL (1903-1987) was born in Newnan, Georgia. He became one of America's most widely read, prolific, and critically debated writers, with a literary output of more than sixty titles. At the time of his death, Caldwell's books had sold eighty million copies worldwide in more than forty languages. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1984.

Editorial Reviews

A beautifully integrated story of the barren southern farm and the shut southern mill, and one of the finest studies of the southern poor white which has ever come into our literature. Writing in the brutal images of the life of his poor white people, Mr. Caldwell has caught in poetic quality the debased and futile aspiration of men and women restless in a world of long hungers which must be satisfied quickly, if at all.

Saturday Review of Literature

What William Faulkner implies, Erskine Caldwell records.

Chicago Tribune

Caldwell is one of the best . . . a master illusionist who can create, as Hemingway did, an impression of absolute reality.

TIME Magazine

What William Faulkner implies, Erskine Caldwell records.

Chicago Tribune

Caldwell is one of the best . . . a master illusionist who can create, as Hemingway did, an impression of absolute reality.

Time Magazine

"What William Faulkner implies, Erskine Caldwell records."--Chicago Tribune

"Caldwell is one of the best . . . a master illusionist who can create, as Hemingway did, an impression of absolute reality."--Time Magazine

"A beautifully integrated story of the barren southern farm and the shut southern mill, and one of the finest studies of the southern poor white which has ever come into our literature. Writing in the brutal images of the life of his poor white people, Mr. Caldwell has caught in poetic quality the debased and futile aspiration of men and women restless in a world of long hungers which must be satisfied quickly, if at all."--Saturday Review of Literature

From the Publisher

The X-rated scenes in this comic portrayal of rural Georgia life probably seem less shocking than they did in 1933 when the book was first published. They may also seem less amusing. While a dirt farmer named Ty Ty Walden spends 15 years digging holes in his fields looking for gold, his hot-headed sons do less digging and more squabbling over women. Add a lascivious brother-in-law who has been laid off from his job in a mill, another brother from the city who shows up to steal his brother's wife, and a promiscuous sister named Darlin' Jill, and the final blowup is hardly surprising. But there are other less predictable surprises as the story veers toward melodrama. With murder and rape following a killing at the mill, it is as if Caldwell flipped a switch from "farce" to "tragedy." This puts the narrator on the spot, even one as skilled as Buck Schirner. Inevitably, Schirner's hilarious hillbilly accent, which sounds so right at the beginning of the book, becomes a near travesty as the final tragedies unfold. Only academic collections need consider.-Jo Carr, Sarasota, Fla.

Library Journal

**** Reprint, in U. of Georgia Press' Brown Thrasher Books, of the classic originally published by Viking in 1933 (cited in BCL3). New (4p.) foreword by Lewis Nordan. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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