What do you think?
Rate this book
Tobacco Road
Jack Kirkland adapted from the novel by Erskine Caldwell Full Length, Comedy 6 male, 5 female Exterior Set The story of the Lester's of "Tobacco Road", of father Jeeter who dreams of planting a garden beside his ramshackle home, the idiotic son who marries a ravenous evangelist and drives an automobile to destruction, a daughter with strong sexual inclinations, another who is sold into marriage for $7. This heralded play ran for over 3,000 performances
- GenresPlays
97 pages, Paperback
Published February 14, 2011
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 7, 2025
Truly some of the worst people I’ve read in a play (and that’s saying something) but by the end it did have me crying for them. A good analysis of bad people and bad situations - are they horrible because their situation is so hopeless? Or are they in a hopeless situation because they are bad people? I don’t know and it’s that ambiguity that made it a great read.
August 7, 2025
Pathetic people, pathetic story. About what I expected
December 31, 2024
Found the book while organizing Fix in Art (Epanomi) library, needed something to read while travelling.
Nice play.
Nice play.
August 16, 2023
After some reflection, I realized that I initially judged this play too harshly, and changed my rating from 3 to 4 stars.
Reading a play 90 years after its premiere can create some issues when it comes to interpretation; what may have seemed like obvious satire back then can read like blatant ignorance years later. This is the problem I was running into: discerning social commentary from storytelling.
Tobacco Road is set in the rural, deep south in the 1930s. Many of the social practices then (ie. marrying off children to grown men, domestic abuse, casual racism, etc.) are morally reprehensible to the reader in 2023. However, I realized that it was precisely these offenses that kept me engaged and made this book a page-turner.
The Lester family is a bunch of conniving, hypocritical, stubbornly ignorant characters. Their flaws may very well be because of their extreme poverty, but it becomes difficult to empathize with them when you see the lengths these characters will go to to maintain the life they know. Thus the question becomes: is Tobacco Road a critique of Southern social practices, or an exploration of the effect of poverty on a working class family? Likely, the answer is some combination of the two.
I’ve said it in reviews before and I’ll say it again: the mark of a well-written story is that the ending is the logical conclusion of the beginning. Tobacco Road is an exemplary model of this fact.
Reading a play 90 years after its premiere can create some issues when it comes to interpretation; what may have seemed like obvious satire back then can read like blatant ignorance years later. This is the problem I was running into: discerning social commentary from storytelling.
Tobacco Road is set in the rural, deep south in the 1930s. Many of the social practices then (ie. marrying off children to grown men, domestic abuse, casual racism, etc.) are morally reprehensible to the reader in 2023. However, I realized that it was precisely these offenses that kept me engaged and made this book a page-turner.
The Lester family is a bunch of conniving, hypocritical, stubbornly ignorant characters. Their flaws may very well be because of their extreme poverty, but it becomes difficult to empathize with them when you see the lengths these characters will go to to maintain the life they know. Thus the question becomes: is Tobacco Road a critique of Southern social practices, or an exploration of the effect of poverty on a working class family? Likely, the answer is some combination of the two.
I’ve said it in reviews before and I’ll say it again: the mark of a well-written story is that the ending is the logical conclusion of the beginning. Tobacco Road is an exemplary model of this fact.
November 19, 2016
You can't stop yourself from turning the pages. Not sure what this play would be like on a stage performed, but I give it a 4-Star because I couldn't walk away from it. The characterizations are intriguing and horrifying at the same time, given the time period and place.
July 3, 2018
Foolish play ripe with angry stock characters. I am interested in investigating WHY this play is a classic.
September 18, 2021
No idea how this play ran so long on Broadway.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews