The New York Times reports that male jewelry enthusiast Johnny Depp has begun editing work on "House of Earth," a previously unpublished novel written by folk singer Woody Guthrie.

The most surprising aspect of this story is not that an unpublished Woody Guthrie novel has been floating around in the ether since 1947, but that Johnny Depp hasn't already edited and published a previously unpublished Woody Guthrie novel. It just seems like the kind of thing he's been up to the whole time.

The plot follows Tike and Ella May Hamlin, a Dustbowl-era West Texas couple, as they attempt to construct a home for themselves out of adobe.

An essay written for the New York Times Book Review by Depp and his co-editor author Thomas Brinkley, boasts that the book features "Steinbeck's narrative verve" and more importantly "D. H. Lawrence's openness to erotic exploration."

"A scorching lovemaking scene on a hay bale viscerally represents the fertility ritual."

50 Shades of Dust is expected to run about 250 pages and will be published in the spring of 2013.

[NYT // Image via AP]