Jeeter reminds Sister Bessie to pray with Dude. Jeeter shares some of the turnips with Sister Bessie and then listens as she prays. They return to the house and find Sister Bessie, a local woman, waiting there. Jeeter shares some of the turnips with his son, Dude. Jeeter eats most of the turnips and then begins to feel badly. Soon Lov becomes so entranced with Ellie May that he forgets to protect his turnips. During their conversation, Lov notices Ellie May, Jeeter's other daughter, flirting with him from behind a tree. However, Jeeter is so set on getting some of Lov's turnips that he will not even offer advice.

Lov tells his father-in-law that Pearl, his wife, will not sleep in his bed with him. However, Lov decides to stop at the farm of his father-in-law to discuss his wife's behavior, knowing full well that the Lesters will try to steal the turnips. Lov Bensey is walking home from town where he had gone to buy a sack of turnips that will feed him and his wife for weeks. Tobacco Road is a story of futility, of giving up, a story that will either inspire the reader to work that much harder or continue to give up in the face of adversity. Jeeter vows every year that he will find a way to buy the seed and fertilizer needed to farm the land, but every year he finds excuses not to do the work until too much time passes and planting would be futile. Jeeter Lester has always worked the land on which his grandfather once farmed tobacco however, debts have turned Jeeter into a sharecropper on land that the owner no longer wants to farm. Tobacco Road is the story of one family's inability to move on when life does not go as planned. Tobacco Road is a novel by acclaimed writer Erskine Caldwell.

Tobacco road novel