Eudora Welty's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Optimist's Daughter (1972) explores the bonds between a mother and daughter as reflected upon by the daughter after the mother's death.

Flannery O'Connor's collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) presents vivid characters who occupy the mid-1950s American South. Several of these stories are considered masterpieces of the short story form.

Alice Munro's story "Boys and Girls" in the collection Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) also features the Jordan family. It takes place on the fox farm and centers around the narrator's (Del Jordan's) realization of gender differences and the boundaries they impose.

John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is set in the United States during the Great Depression. It traces the migration of the Joad family as they move from their farm in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California. A Pulitzer...