Begun in 1934 in Conceição da Feira in Bahia, when Jorge Amado was 22, Jubiabá was completed in Rio de Janeiro the following year.

[1] Some of the characters of his later works make their first appearance here, such as the sailors Guma and Master Manuel, from Sea of Death, while Tent of Miracles published in 1969, reworked various themes from Jubiabá.

Balduino thenceforth spends the rest of his youth in freedom as a member of a gang of street kids, which anticipates Amado's later novel Captains of the Sands.

Subsequently, he becomes a successful boxer but, depressed after his first defeat, he leaves Salvador and starts to work on a tobacco plantation, only to be forced to flee again when he almost murders a fellow worker.

It continues the theme of development of political consciousness among the working class from Amado's earlier novels Cacau and Sweat.