First published 1936
Jim Nolan joins the Communist Party organizers working among California's migrant apple pickers. Mac, an experienced agitator, takes Jim under his wing as they move into the orchards where workers face brutal conditions and starvation wages. The men live in squalid camps, their families hungry while orchard owners grow rich from their labor. When the workers vote to strike, Jim watches Mac manipulate events to build solidarity and rage. Violence erupts as strikebreakers arrive and local authorities crack down. Jim transforms from naive recruit into hardened revolutionary, learning that individual suffering means nothing against the larger cause. The strike becomes a war between desperate workers and powerful landowners, with Jim caught between his growing commitment to the movement and his horror at the human cost of revolution.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, activism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water
Setting: California
Period: 20th-Century
355 pages · Paperback · Penguin Classics
Content warnings: violence