The Octopus: A Story of California

Frank Norris · 1870–1902 · United States

Why it matters

Wheat farmers in California's San Joaquin Valley are crushed under a railroad monopoly's freight rates and political machine. The first volume of Norris's unfinished Epic of the Wheat, naturalism scaled to continental economics.

At a glance

A large cast and heavy economic detail across a sprawling, deterministic plot.