This work investigates how New Deal-era literature constructed and represented the rural poor within the context of American environmental and class ideologies during the 1930s. Stephen Allen Fender, an academic specializing in American studies, examines the intersection of agrarian myth and economic reality. He analyzes how writers of the period utilized the landscape as a symbolic tool to frame the struggles of the country poor, arguing that these literary depictions often served to reinforce or challenge prevailing political narratives regarding poverty and land ownership.

Scholars frequently cite this text for its nuanced approach to the intersection of environmental history and literary analysis. It is considered a specialized resource for those studying the cultural history of the Great Depression and the evolution of American social realism.