Wasatch County Library

In Dubious Battle is regarded as John Steinbeck's first major novel. Because it stirred up controversy by criticizing social and political practices of the 1930s, Steinbeck found himself accused of being a Communist. But despite this criticism, he went on to create Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, both considered to be masterpieces of American literature. In California apple country, a group of migrant workers decides

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43-year-old Blight County, Idaho, Sheriff Bo Tully finds three young men, apparently farm laborers, lying by a huckleberry patch, each shot in the back of the head. Tully has his hands full with the rare triple murder as well as the disappearance of rancher Orville Poulson, whose so-called caretaker, Ray Crockett, has entrenched himself on Poulson's property.

The tragic story of two itinerant ranch hands on the run--one is the lifelong companion to the other, a developmentally disabled man. "They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living...

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.