God's Little Acre. 1934. Cloth with dustjacket.

Set in a 1930's mill town, it is about a dysfunctional farming family in South Carolina obsessed with sex and wealth. The novel's sexual themes were so controversial that the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice asked a New York state court to censor it. The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1958. Caldwell considered this work to be a "proletarian" novel dealing with the plight of workers deprived of union protection. Will Thompson represents both the power of the working class and how it is frustrated by the law. When Thompson is killed by guards as he attempts to reopen the mill, his death becomes a rallying cry. But the workers remain disempowered, as the mills remain closed. The book's tone changes from farce to tragedy.