We couldn’t have started this novel at a perfect time. Set in the Salinas Valley a few hundred miles south of where we are in Southern Oregon, John Steinbeck’s descriptions of that valley couldn’t have felt more familiar unless I had been driving through King City California. Reading about the yellow mustard growing as big as trees when I could look up at the hills as they turned from yellow and green into golden brown in the June sun was magical.
I knew nothing about this novel going into it and it was a surprisingly deep and affecting journey. The layers of sibling rivalry, the biblical allusions to Cain and Abel and the poison of ambition with the possibility of our escaping from its fatal trap, if we could? It was a beautiful journey and an American Classic.
I am looking forward to seeing the Netflix adaption of the novel coming out in the fall of 2026.
