Set in the depression of the 1930s, this is the story of one of the thousands of destitute families which fled the Dust Bowl for the promise of California. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1939. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California along with thousands of other "Okies" seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future.