The son of Ira S. Caldwell, a Presbyterian minister, and Caroline Preston Bell, a school-teacher, Erskine Caldwell was born in White Oak, Georgia, and because of the expediencies of his father's profession, the family moved often, living in various places in the Deep South. Tutored at home by his mother in his childhood, he attended high school in Wrens, Georgia, before going on to Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia. He left the last institution, however, without a degree in 1925 to become a newspaper reporter for the Atlanta Journal. That same year he married Helen Lannegan, by whom he had three children. In 1926 the family moved to Maine in order for Caldwell to devote himself to a writing career. In 1932 he achieved his first real literary success with his third novel, Tobacco Road, but the book did not...