Soon after publication, a script was written for a play based on the novel. She said, “A lot of the things in Caldwell’s book, Tobacco Road, I saw growing up.” Ruth was a Depression-era, Tobacco Road girl raised on Old Waynesboro Road which is not far from Tobacco Road. Ruth Schlein was four years old when it was published. According to Caldwell, poverty caused their behavior. At the root of the Geter’s family drama was their extreme poverty.

Caldwell took a shot at religion as well through the character of a woman preacher with no nose who ran around with a much younger man. As he traveled with his dad on pastoral visits he saw terrible poverty and based his novel on an exaggeration of conditions he witnessed.Ĭaldwell depicted the Geeter family with gross sexuality, casual violence, selfishness, and an overall lack of decency. Caldwell traveled with his dad, a high school teacher and football coach at Wrens, Georgia, High School, and an Associate Reformed Presbyterian minister. This route to the river became known as Tobacco Road.Įrskine Caldwell’s book, Tobacco Road, depicts the fictional Geter family in a raunchy and raucous narrative that brought shame to the South, Augusta, and the people who lived on Tobacco Road during the Great Depression.

The tobacco was placed in hogsheads weighing about one thousand pounds and pulled to the river by oxen. Farmers raised tobacco, a cash crop, and had to get it to the Savannah River for shipment to England. Tobacco Road in South Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia, got its name during the time before and after the Revolutionary War. Memphis has Beale Street, and Augusta has the infamous Tobacco Road.

Tobacco road novel