Brilliant, evocative, poetic, savage, this Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel (1934) depicts a white, middle-class urban family that is turned into dirt-poor farmers by the Depression and the great drought of the thirties. The novel moves through a single year and, at the same time, a decade of years, from the spring arrival of the family at their mortgaged farm to the winter 10 years later, when the ravages of drought, fire, and personal anguish have led to the deaths of two of the five. Like Ethan Frome, the relatively brief, intense story evokes the torment possible among people isolated and driven by strong feelings of love and hate that, unexpressed, lead inevitably to doom. Reviewers in the thirties praised the novel, calling its prose "profoundly moving music," expressing incredulity "that this mature style and this mature point of view are those of a young women in her twenties," comparing the book to "the luminous work of Willa Cather," and, with prescience, suggesting that it "has that rare quality of timelessness which is the mark of first-rate fiction."

约瑟芬·约翰逊（Josephine Johnson） (1910-1990)，美国作家。曾著有十一部作品，包括小说、诗歌与散文。曾在《大西洋月刊》(the Atlantic)、《名利场》(Vanity Fair)、《圣路易斯评论》(st . Louis Review)上发表短篇小说。多次获欧·亨利奖。1935年，年仅25岁的约瑟芬凭借自己的第一部小说《十一月的此刻》（Now in November）获得普利策文学奖。