Novels and Stories 1932-1937

This collection gathers the run of novels and stories that established John Steinbeck's reputation, all set among the farms, orchards, and migrant camps of California in the years around the Great Depression.

The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unknown explore small communities shadowed by fate and myth; Tortilla Flat follows a loose band of paisanos living outside conventional society; In Dubious Battle dramatizes a bitter agricultural labor strike; and Of Mice and Men tells the story of two displaced ranch hands, George and Lennie, whose dream of a small farm of their own ends in tragedy.

Read together, the five works trace Steinbeck's growing concern with the dignity and precariousness of ordinary working people, themes that would culminate in The Grapes of Wrath.