John Steinbeck: Novels and Stories 1932-1937 (LOA #72)

The Pastures of Heaven / To a God Unknown / Tortilla Flat / In Dubious Battle / Of Mice and Men

Author  John Steinbeck Edited by  Robert DeMott and Elaine Steinbeck
John Steinbeck: Novels and Stories 1932-1937 (LOA #72)

The Library of America presents for the first time in one volume Steinbeck’s early writings, which expressed his abiding concerns for community, social justice, and the elemental connection between nature and human society. In prose that blends the vernacular and the incantatory, the local and the mythic, these five works chart Steinbeck’s evolution into one of the greatest and most enduring popular of American novelists.

The Pastures of Heaven (1932), a collection of interrelated stories, delineates the troubled inner lives and sometimes disastrous fates of families living in a seemingly tranquil California valley. The surface realism of Steinbeck’s first mature work is enriched by hints of uncanny forces at work beneath.
 
“Deep down it’s mine, right to the center of…