McCullers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson_McCullers) takes us to a Georgia mill town in the 1930s. The characters she portrays yearn for something beyond the sun baked tedium of small town life.
The central character is John Singer, a deaf-mute, through whom we meet and are made to enter into the lives of the dispossessed. There is a remarkable surety of narrative delivery from an author who was only 23 years old at the date of the novel’s publication in 1940. You’d be hard pressed to read a better fictional study of loneliness and isolation. A powerfully moving book.
Brought to the screen in 1968 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063050/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl) Available on DVD at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heart-Lonely-Hunter-Region-NTSC/dp/B00005JO5S/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1373738572&sr=1-2&keywords=the+heart+is+a+lonely+hunter
Should you be interested in loneliness try The Lonely City by Olivia Laing (Amazon.co.uk : the lonely city olivia laing)
352 pages in Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition.
ISBN 978-0141185224
Carson McCullers