East of Eden

1 About this book

East of Eden, published in 1952, follows two families in California's Salinas Valley from the late nineteenth century to the end of the First World War. The Hamiltons, modeled on the family of Steinbeck's own grandfather, are poor in land and rich in children and ideas. Adam Trask arrives from the East with an inheritance, a troubled history with his brother, and a wife, Cathy, whose nature he does not understand. He raises twin sons, and in them the rivalry of the earlier generation, and of Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis, plays out again. Steinbeck considered the novel his most important work and wrote it for his own two young sons.

• Historical fiction
• Literary fiction
• Classics
• Migrant labor
• Domestic fiction
• Love
• Guilt
• Freedom