Reading Level: Upper IntermediateSteinbecks most powerful novel describes the lives of a homeless farming family as they travel across America in the Great Depression of the 1930s. When the Joad family loses its farm in Oklahoma, they join thousands of other families on the journey to a new life in California where they have heard there is work picking fruit. Every step of the way, the family face hardship and hostility as they struggle to survive in a country where kindness no longer exists.