Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. They set out for California along with thousands of other "Okies" seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck creates a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision; an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit.

Published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

This book is also available as a paperback and ebook from Barking & Dagenham Libraries