God's Little Acre

by Erskine Caldwell

Book 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...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451519965
• ISBN13: 9780451519962
• Release Date: January 1946
• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Length: 1 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

God's Little Acre was ahead of its time...Mary from Georgia

Maybe this book was too contemporary for its 1930's audience. However, the theme and language are quite tame compared to some of the works of the 21st century writers. Although there are many people in Georgia who are extemely intelligent and have created the best literature to date (Margaret Mitchell & Alice Walker, for example). There are still people who are similar to the characters in God's Little Acre in Georgia and other colorful characters in the United States. This work compares to the writings of William Falkner, who is considered tied for the honor of the greatest writer of the 20th Century along beside Ernest Hemmingway. It also compares with Billy Bob Thortnon's brilliance of charater in his writings as well. The theme is spiritual as well as sensual. Don't take my word for it...Read it and compare it to Slingblade, The Sound and the Fury, and The Color Purple.

It's a crime that this book isn't taught in Lit courses!

This is a great book -- better, even, than Tobacco Road.Caldwell is like Hemingway and Faulkner got together and had a baby, fed it lots of bad liquor, kicked it around and finally taught it to love this sorry, sordid world.It's a damned shame people don't read him much anymore.

FAST TIMES IN THE DEPRESSION ERA SOUTH

If Andy Griffith and Hugh Heffner were to co-author a Shakespearian tragedy it would be a lot like "God's Little Acre." When there ain't no money in planting cotton and the mill's shut up there ain't but one thing for men and women to do to keep their minds off of their troubles: SEX!TyTy Walden is as obsessed with finding gold on his land as Captain Ahab was about finding the great white whale. Greselda Walden has to be one of the most desired and fought over women in all of American literature. And what red blooded American male would not have wanted a date with Darling Jill. This book alternates from being light-hearted and silly to being very serious and profound. There is great pathos in the description of the desperation of Will Thompson and the other starving mill workers to re-open the mill and go back to work. The death of Will Thompson is a great reminder of the struggle of working people to be treated fairly in this country. This book accurately recounts the hopes and fears of the thousands of working class people who were forced to live in "company towns" and who "owed their soul to the company store." Although I found some of the more explicit sexual content of this novel to be silly and somewhat overdone (I don't think that most people in rural Georgia in the 1930's were this open about their sexualty!), this is a great American novel and Erskine Caldwell should be remembered as one of the great American writers of this century.