Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

2015

Full brown goatskin split over hinged boards with reverse offset printing and applied 23c gold, doublures of alum tawed goat with reverse offset printing, endpapers of orange watercolour and neon orange acrylic, hand coloured edges, hand sewn endbands.

The cover depicts the old Highway 66 approaching the Sierra Nevada mountains, the route taken by so many economic migrants from the Dust Bowl seeking the promised land of California where there is work and you can ‘pick oranges off the tree’. The reality is quite different - precious little work and piles of oranges destroyed and rotting to keep the price inflated. A window through the cover glimpses the fabled oranges but on the inside it’s more of a bullet wound. A split would normally be thrown away but in the spirit of the Joad family’s philosophy or ‘make do and mend’ it was used to cover the book. Front doublure - Dust Bowl refugee woman washing clothes in California migrant camp. 1937. Dorothea Lange. Rear doublure - A mother does laundry. Dust to Dust. USA. Kerman, California. 2005. Matt Black/Magnum Photos. Nothing has changed.