I was gifted this book and was completely shocked by how entertaining and well written this was. It was a joy to read but unsurprisingly depressing. The story is about a family of tenant farmers in the dust bowl that get booted off their farm in Oklahoma and travel West in hopes of work. This book to me is the Uncle Tom’s cabin but for sharecroppers. Steinbeck takes no prisoners in his scathing critique of laissez faire capitalism that completely hung the poor people out to dry during the Great Depression. A master class on making interesting and contextualized dialogue, conversations are thought provoking and extremely moving. I wanted to travel back in time to punch those big banks right in the kisser, I’m voting Bernie Sanders next year. What was also unsurprising was that upon publication, this book was immediately considered as communist propaganda, was banned, burned, and censored. Put this on your list in front of “Of Mice and Men” if that book is on your list as I think this one is much better from John. Here are two excerpts to give you a sense of style, both are unrelated to the main plot, so NO SPOILERS

“The big cars on the highway. Languid, heat-raddled ladies, small nucleuses about whom revolve a thousand accouterments: creams, ointments to grease themselves, coloring matter in phials black, pink, red, white, green, silver change the color of hair, eyes, lips, nails, brows, lashes, lids. Oils, seeds, and pills to make the bowels move. A bag of bottles, syringes, pills, powders, fluids, jellies to make their sexual intercourse safe, odorless, and unproductive. And this apart from clothes. What a hell of a nuisance! Lines of weariness around the eyes, lines of discontent down from the mouth, breasts lying heavily in little hammocks, stomach and thighs straining against cases of rubber. And the mouths panting, the eyes sullen, disliking sun and wind and earth, resenting food and weariness, hating time that rarely makes them beautiful and always makes them old. Beside them, little pot-bellied men in light suits and panama hats; clean, pink men with puzzled, worried eyes, with restless eyes. Worried because formulas do not work out; hungry for security and yet sensing its disappearance from the earth. In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is; that business men are intelligent in spite of the records of their stupidity; that they are kind and charitable in spite of the principles of sound business; that their lives are rich instead of the thin tiresome routines they know; and that a time is coming when they will not be afraid any more.”

And one more for good measure:

“I was a recruit against Geronimo And the people listened, and their quiet eyes reflected the dying fire. Them Injuns was cuteslick as snakes, an’ quiet when they wanted. Could go through dry leaves, an’ make no rustle. Try to do that sometimes. And the people listened and remembered the crash of dry leaves under their feet. Come the change of season an’ the clouds up. Wrong time. Ever hear of the army doing anything right? Give the army ten chances, an’ they’ll stumble along. Took three regiments to kill a hundred bravesalways. And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers,gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them. They was a brave on a ridge, against the sun. Knowed he stood out. Spread his arms an’ stood. Naked as morning, an’ against the sun. Maybe he was crazy. I don’ know. Stood there, arms spread out; like a cross he looked. Four hunderd yards. An’ the menwell, they raised their sights an’ they felt the wind with their fingers; an’ then they jus’ lay there an’ couldn’ shoot. Maybe that Injun knowed somepin. Knowed we couldn’ shoot. Jes’ laid there with the rifles cocked, an’ didn’ even put ’em to our shoulders. Lookin’ at him. Headband, one feather. Could see it, an’ naked as the sun. Long time we laid there an’ looked, an’ he never moved. An’ then the captain got mad. “Shoot, you crazy bastards, shoot!” he yells. An’ we jus’ laid there. “I’ll give you to a five-count, an’ then mark you down,” the captain says. Well sir we put up our rifles slow, an’ ever’ man hoped somebody’d shoot first. I ain’t never been so sad in my life. An’ I laid my sights on his belly, ‘cause you can’t stop a Injun no other placean’ then. Well, he jest plunked down an’ rolled. An’ we went up. An’ he wasn’t bighe’d looked so grandup there. All tore to pieces an’ little. Ever see a cock pheasant, stiff and beautiful, ever’ feather drawed an’ painted, an’ even his eyes drawed in pretty? An’ bang! You pick him upbloody an’ twisted, an’ you spoiled somepin better’n you; an’ eatin’ him don’t never make it up to you, ‘cause you spoiled somepin in yaself, an’ you can’t never fix it up. And the people nodded, and perhaps the fire spurted a little light and showed their eyes looking in on themselves. Against the sun, with his arms out. An’ he looked big as God.”