Book #2: Tobacco Road

Where I live, all the women are in a book club.

I was here a year before someone invited me to join their book club. I don't think it's me; I think people don't think of clergy people socially sometimes, the same way kids don't think about teachers as real humans and thus have mini-meltdowns when they see their teacher in the grocery store.

Anyhow.

In about two weeks, I'm going to go to a book club to discuss Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road. Now. Apparently, this is some sort of "classic;" one of the women who works the front desk said it used to be required reading when she was growing up. Set during the Depression in Georgia, the story revolves around a family of farmers who are no longer able to farm, due to lack of credit and technology. The characters are lacking in every way possible but particularly, and most unfortunately, in things like good sense, imagination, and the ability to adapt.

This is not the story I've heard of the Depression in the South. The story I've heard goes a little more like this:

We were already living so hand to mouth when the Depression came, we couldn't tell that much of a difference. We quit selling crops and grew stuff to feed ourselves instead. The biggest difference was we didn't have new shoes. We would resole shoes with old tires from around the farm.

I wonder what my granny, who I'm paraphrasing above, would think of this book.

If you're in the market for a life is short and brutal type novel, go for it. If not, do not touch with a ten foot pole.