G od's Little Acre contains some of the best-known and most misunderstood characters in American literature. Ty Ty Walden is often represented as the embodiment of shiftless poor white trash (a characterization that better applies to Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road, although even there it would be a simplification). Ty Ty is, however, a landowner and, in his own way, a respectable, God-loving (as opposed to God-fearing) man. He loves his family and attempts to keep harmony among its members. He is, of course, also a comic figure. He claims to be "scientific" in his quest for the gold, but he is quick to use an albino to find it when Pluto Swint, a local candidate for sheriff and Darling Jill's suitor, tells him that albinos have a magical ability to discover such treasures. Ty Ty's error, one which Caldwell deplores, is his failure of responsibility toward the...