God's Little Acre is a 1933 novel by Erskine Caldwell about a dysfunctional farming family in Georgia obsessed with sex and wealth.

Although controversial, the novel became an international best seller with over 10 million copies sold,[1] and was published as an Armed Services Edition during WWII.

Pluto Swint, an obese and lazy local farmer, sexually desires and wants to marry Darling Jill, who constantly humiliates him.

The local union of mill workers was locked out by management 18 months earlier after they protested against a wage cut.

Extensive poverty now afflicts the towns of Scottsville and Clark's Mill, and the Horse Creek Valley (where the Waldens live).

The novel opens with Pluto Swint arriving at the Walden farm to announce that he is running for county sheriff.

The morning of the third day, Pluto drives Will, Rosamund, Darling Jill, and Griselda back to the Thompson house in South Carolina.

After a while he calmly looks at Griselda and tells her that the time has come, and nothing in God’s world can stop him now, and in an insane burst of flying fingers and throbbing muscles he tears off her clothes like a madman as she watches unresistingly, until she stands before him, waiting and trembling.

No one but Pluto got much sleep that night, and the next morning Will’s three paramours — his wife Rosamund, and his sisters-in-law Darling Jill and Griselda — hurriedly, easily and lovingly fix his breakfast.

During the fourth day, Will learns that the mill owners have brought in out-of-state security guards to keep the plant closed.

Published by Viking Press in 1933, God's Little Acre was in part influenced by textile mill strikes in Gastonia, North Carolina.

[1] God's Little Acre contained scenes considered sexually explicit, leading the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to take Caldwell and Viking Press to court for disseminating pornography.

[1] Over 60 literary figures supported the book, placing pressure on the New York State Magistrates' Court, which ruled in favor of Caldwell's rights to freedom of expression.

)[citation needed] In the 1955 film Mister Roberts, Ensign Pulver (Jack Lemmon) proudly states that he read God's Little Acre through to the end.

Mr. Roberts (Henry Fonda) is not impressed and tells Doc (William Powell), "He's been reading God's Little Acre for over a year now.

In the Amazon television series Goliath (S1 E2), Billy Bob Thornton's character uses God's Little Acre as a reference for redefining rock-bottom in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

In The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode "The Birds and ... Um ... Bess" (S2 E1), when asked how he learned about sex for the first time, Ted Baxter says: "I read a book.