To be a poor worker during the Great Depression of the 1930s was a miserable experience, an experience that American novelist John Ernst Steinbeck captured in his touching novels, several of which were set in Central California where he was born and raised.
Steinbeck, who was born in 1902 in Salinas, was struck by the painful life suffered by poor laborers due to grinding economic and social conditions. This theme was strongly developed in some of his best known and respected novels, "Tortilla Flat" (1935), "Of Mice and Men" (1937), and "Grapes of Wrath" (1939).
"East of Eden" (1952), one of the best of his later novels, dealt with the need for understanding and love among people, while his "Travels With Charley" (1962) described a trip across the United States with his poodle.
