Tobacco Road

Blurb

Tobacco Road is a 1932 novel by Erskine Caldwell about Georgia sharecroppers. It was dramatized for Broadway by Jack Kirkland in 1933, and ran for a then-astounding eight years. A 1941 film version, deliberately played mainly for laughs, was directed by John Ford, and the storyline was considerably altered. The novel itself was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. Caldwell was a supporter of eugenics at a time it was gaining in popularity in the United States, and Tobacco Road can be read as promoting new legislation requiring involuntary sterilization.