It has to be said, not a lot actually happens in this book. Tike and Ella May Hamlin have sex and have a baby, all the while bitching - with ample justification, it must be said - about their economic situation and the potential benefits of adobe housing. This is sort of an alternate view to The Grapes of Wrath - while the Joads leave their dustbowl home to seek a better life in California, the Hamlins stay where they are, dragging an ever more precarious living out of dust storms and poor soil.

The plot isn't complex, the characters are really there only to hammer Guthrie's message (he was a big fan of adobe houses; thought that their use would improve living conditions for the poor, who lived in genuinely terrible wooden shacks that were totally unsuited to the landscape). In that sense the book is quite one-note. The language, however, is extraordinary - and when push comes to shove, I care more for language than plot or character.