The original and important talent of Erskine Caldwell created an authentic picture of a family of poor whites in a forsaken part of Georgia that is absolutely breath-taking. The story of the disintegration of old man Jeeter and his family, of their dehumanization, is so appalling that the reader is spellbound and has to read on. This novel is not only the recital of a tale so stark as to excite hypnotic power. It is, most definitely, not a "shocker." It is a piece of genuine literature. The characters are vivid, accurate. The writing is frequently Rabelaisian. There is humor and Pathos in this tragedy. Old man Jeeter's destiny - that of the white man, deteriorated by a climate inexorably adverse, fua1ly extinguished by a distant industrialism of which he is not even aware - touches the universal.