The Winning of Barbara Worth

There is a reference in The Grapes of Wrath to this book. It seems that one of the characters found this book to have been life changing, or something.

Tom said, "Don't roust your faith bird-high an' you won't do no crawlin' with the worms."
"I know that's right. That's Scripture, ain't it?"
"I guess so," said Tom. "I never could keep Scripture straight sence I read a book name' The Winning of Barbara Worth."

So, I figured I should check it out. The author, Harold Bell Wright, after all, was at one time a well respected author. Other than Emily Bronte, perhaps (Wuthering Heights is total garbage and should be banned from libraries and book stores), most respected authors from olden times wrote books that are actually reasonably good.

This show more was an interesting book to read after The Grapes of Wrath. That book was about poor farmers leaving the dust bowl of the American midwest for the "garden of Eden" that was southern California. This book is sort of like a prequel. It deals with the turning the desert of Southern California into that Garden of Eden by way of diverting the Colorado River so as to irrigate the desert.

Well, that's the back story. The actual story is more like how a lovely young woman changed the lives of financeers and engineers by showing them that there was more to life than mere money...or something like that.

This is one of those in-the-seams books. Not quite good enough for 4*s, but too good for merely 3*s. It's a product of its times, which means moralizing, romantic and racist. Harold Bell Wright was a popular author back in the day, which means he knew how to tell a good story. show less

An old-fashioned but fascinating fictionalized history of the Imperial Valley and accidental formation of the Salton Sea by flooding from the Colorado River.

Young Barbara is found in the dessert. She is adopted by Jefferson Worth. The story is about the winning of Barbara, so we get her romance. It is also about her father. But most of all it about the winning of the California dessert and creating a new place for people to live.

Combining political themes of the bringing of civilization via water to the Southwest, with a fictional love story of the usual Wright genre, this book is well known and has made the illustration of Barbara Worth, as well as her name widely used. A street in Tucson and near El Centro, CA, as well as a country club near the latter, bearing her name. Many of the citrus companies in the Imperial Valley used the illustration on the cover for their company logo. It is a good story and it is good to know the background for all this fame. Four black and white illustrations by Cootes contribute to the book as does the DJ with Cootes' illustration.

This is one of the best known of Wright's books in California. A museum resides in the town nearest the setting - the making of a lake. More later.

One Copy given to Dave Roseman - 3/2026

See other reviews. This one also contains stills from the movie with Vilma Banky and Ronald Coleman. The dust jacket is a colorized still from the movie as well.