Tragic Ground was published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in 1944, and it transposes the Caldwell formula from the country to the city — or rather, to the industrial wasteland between the two. Spence Douthit is a rural Georgian who moved his family to the town of Beaseley County during the war boom to work in a munitions factory. The factory has closed, and the Douthits are stranded: they have no money to return to their farm (which has been taken over by others), no skills suited to urban employment, and no prospects.
The Douthits live in a slum called Poor Boy — a collection of shacks inhabited by other displaced rural families — and Spence’s days are spent in a futile search for work, drink, and sexual adventure, while his wife Maud tries to hold the family together and their daughter Libby is drawn into prostitution. The social worker who tries to “help” the Douthits represents a liberal establishment that means well but understands nothing about the world it is trying to reform.
Caldwell’s point is that the Douthits are the same people as the Lesters of Tobacco Road — displaced by economic forces beyond their control — but their displacement has moved from the farm to the factory to the slum. The “tragic ground” is not a specific place but a condition: the state of being surplus, unwanted by any economic system, left to rot in whatever corner the economy has discarded them in.
Collecting Tragic Ground
First edition (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1944): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $25–$60
- Without jacket: $8–$15