"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

I have never read this American classic until now, and it was an experience to be had.  Not as gripping as Murakami's works, nor as page-turning as Dan Brown's literary offspring, it is nevertheless an interesting and beautiful account.   The book depicts the Joad family as the move out of Sallisaw, OK to California along route 66.  Tom Joad, the eldest son, just released from prison for homicide is one of the most important characters in the book, though Mother Joad is a striking character on her own. 

The book depicts the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s, together with the Great Depression forced thousands of people from the south-east to move to California, mostly on promises of great climate and great jobs.  The promises vanish when families arrive in California.  Even though the family is cheated and hated during the entire trip to California, it is only when they arrive and pass the state police road block - that they realize the extent of hatred that exists in California towards the newcomers.  The local gas station attendants call the newcomers 'non-human' and 'animals' and 'different species' because of the lowly poor conditions under which they are forced to travel, eat and live, since their money was taken by the banks back east and everybody on the road tried to get as much money out of them as they could, regardless of the life and death consequences. 

Once in California, they realize that the evil local landowners cheated them into coming in huge numbers so they can manipulate the pay rate and pay next to nothing for hard labor, even down to 2.5 cents for a basket of peaches - impossible to even buy food on such wages.  Tom Joad gets involved with some local strikers, who are derogatorily called 'reds' by the sheriff deputies and the landowners.  Tom gets injured when trying to defend a preacher who gets killed because is helping organize a strike. 

At the end of the book Rose Sharon, the eldest daughter of the Joads, who had still birth, after her husband left her, gives her breast milk to a man dying of hunger in an abandoned barn amidst hellish downpours that lasted for weeks - in that wonderful land of California.