Conroy wrote it initially as nonfiction, but editors insisted he fictionalize the story for better audience reception.

Larry throws a dirt clod at Bonny Fern's head one day and the next tries to give her a flower.

The camp miner's go on strike, and Larry's father meets unsuccessfully with Mr. Stacpoole to negotiate.

Rollie Weems leaves town after rumors start that he got Mattie Perkins pregnant.

Mike Riordan, who had disappeared following Tom's funeral, reappears and periodically leaves groceries on the Donovan's porch.

Bull Market Larry starts going to night school and also gets a job at the railroad, where he becomes friends with Ed Warren.

At the steel mill, Larry meets several people, including an old man the workers call “Bun” Grady.

Larry finds a job at the rubber plant and meets Hans, a German worker, and Jasper, a prankster of sorts.

Getting word that Helen is in Detroit, Larry follows her to a whorehouse that is disguised as a lunch counter.

The Hard Winter The Stock Market crashes and men from the auto factory are laid off.

After being gone for some time, Bonny Fern sends Larry a letter detailing his mother's poor living conditions.

When they reach the camp, they find Mother, Aunt Jessie, and the kids nearly starved and living in Liam Ryan's old barroom.

After fixing a leaky roof and buying the family groceries, Ed and Larry look for work.

It seems his once uppity older brother, Paul Stafford, has been buried alive working in the pipeline ditch.

Eventually one farmer sells the farm and goods back to Ben Haskins for 99 cents.

Mother and Bonny Fern wave good-bye as the Moore family, Hans, Ed, and Larry drive off.

Once Conroy made the suggested revisions, the book was released to mixed reviews [2] .

The novel suggests that freedom must be achieved through responsible collective action, not through individual virtue alone.

This is an arguable position, however, due to the fact that there is no singular definition of proletarian literature.

Whatever the definition, most of the so-called proletarian fiction in the 1930s was written by middle class authors who had lost faith in capitalism and were interested in dramatizing the “coming struggle for power” [8] However, once the Great Depression began to weigh heavily on the American landscape—unemployment, evictions, strikes, etc.—writing about these conditions hit home, and became legitimate subjects for literary works.

Works like The Disinherited opened a new class of literary realism and helped break down the barriers between literate and illiterate America [9] 1905 The US Supreme Court decides Lochner v. New York, setting a precedent that lasts until 1934.

The novel opens in Monkey Nest Camp, a coal mining community, most likely set in northern Missouri, where Conroy lived as a boy.

His friend and co-work, Ed Warden, introduces Larry to the pleasures of womanly flesh by setting him up with Wilma, an experienced fifteen-year-old girl.

Early 1918 A devastating influenza pandemic sweeps the United States and the rest of the world.

He begins to show interest in Bonny Fern, the girl for whom Larry has unresolved feelings.

This results in the dissolution of the monarchy, the formation of the Weimar Republic, leading eventually to Hitler’s rise to power.

Ed writes Larry, inviting him to come to Detroit, where jobs are plentiful at the automobile factories.

October 1929 The stock market crash occurs despite Hoover’s promises of prosperity.