John Steinbeck : Novels and Stories, 1932-1937 : The Pastures of Heaven / To a God Unknown / Tortilla Flat / In Dubious Battle / Of Mice and Men (Library of America)

John Steinbeck, from the very start of his career, evoked the landscape and people of central California with lyrical intensity and unflinching frankness. The Library of America presents for the first time in one volume Steinbecks 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 Steinbecks 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 Steinbecks first mature work is enriched by hints of uncanny forces at work beneath.

Deep down its mine, right to the center of the world, says Salinas Valley farmer Joseph Wayne about his land in John SteinbecksTo a God Unknown(1933). A sense of primeval magic dominates the novel as the farmer reverts to pagan nature worship and begins a tortuous journey toward catastrophe and ultimate understanding.

Steinbecks sympathetic depiction of the raffishpaisonsofTortilla Flat(1935), a ramshackle district above Monterey, first won him popular attention. The Flats tenderhearted, resourceful, mildly corrupt, over-optimistic characters are a triumph of life-affirming humor.

In Dubious Battle(1936) plunges into the political struggle of the 1930s and paints a vigorous fresco of a migrant fruit-pickers strike. Anticipating the collective portraiture ofThe Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck poignantly traces the surges and shifts of group behavior.

WithOf Mice and Men(1937), Steinbeck secured his status as one of the most influential American writers. Lennie and George, itinerant farmhands held together in the face of deprivation only by the frailest of dreams, have long since passed into American mythology. This novel, which Steinbeck called such a simple little thing, is now recognized as a masterpiece of concentrated emotional power.