God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road (1932) are the works for which Caldwell is most often remembered. Both books deal with man's struggle with nature and the difficulty of maintaining even the semblance of humanity in the grip of unrelieved poverty, but of the two novels, God's Little Acre is probably the more successful overall.

During his childhood in Wrens, Georgia, Caldwell had observed the wretched state of the sharecroppers and small farmers in the region. Often terribly undernourished, unlearned, and diseased, they fought for their continued existence. In 1931, during a return trip to the region, he was again reminded of these conditions, which had grown, if possible, even worse during his absence. Thus, both Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre were written in direct response to his feelings of outrage and his desire to call these circumstances to the attention of the general public. At the...