Set during the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath opens with the return of Tom Joad, the protagonist, to his family in Oklahoma after being paroled from prison. He has served a sentence for manslaughter after killing a man who attacked him with a knife, and he has been released on licence due to his good behaviour as a convict. What he comes back to, however, is the family home and farm that has been abandoned. The downward spiral of failed crops, the Dust Bowl phenomenon, and the economic crash, has resulted in many small farming families like the Joads losing their land to the banks, leading to a mass migration; many of them heading west to California after they are misled into believing that there is plenty of work there for them.