Erskine Caldwell, an American novelist, was born in rural South Gerogia and grew up in many areas of the South. He later would write many books about his homeland. Tobacco Road, his third novel, is one of his most famous, along with God's Little Acre, published later. Tobacco Road is a 1932 novel written by Erskine Caldwell about the struggles of Georgia sharecroppers during the worst years of the Great Depression. It depicts a family of poor white tenant farmers, the Lesters, as one of the many small Southern farmers estranged by the industrialization of production, absentee ownership of farm land, tigher credit markets, high interest rates charged by predatory lenders, drought and increasing migration into cities for jobs in industry. The main character of the novel is Jeeter Lester, an sinful man who is redeemed by his great love of the land and his great faith in the fertility and promise of the rich soil of his homeland. The novel was a great success, and also became a very successful stage play which ran for over eight years. The novel was one of many that Caldwell wrote about the people of the Southern United States, and during his lifetime he sold millions of novels and published a play and book of photographs.