Which novel by John Steinbeck tells the story of the Joad family?

Which novel by John Steinbeck tells the story of the Joad family? It is “The Grapes of Wrath.” Steinbeck’s 1939 American realist novel follows the Joads as economic collapse and environmental disaster drive them from Oklahoma toward California.

The family’s journey takes place during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Drought, bank foreclosures, mechanized agriculture, and the loss of tenant-farming work push thousands of families west along Route 66, often based on exaggerated promises of jobs and prosperity.

Tom Joad is the central character, but his mother, Ma Joad, becomes the family’s emotional and practical anchor as they endure deaths, exploitation, overcrowded camps, low wages, and hunger. Steinbeck alternates the Joad narrative with interchapters that broaden the story into a portrait of migration and inequality.

The novel was published on April 14, 1939, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was adapted into a major 1940 film directed by John Ford. It is often regarded as a landmark of American literature.