The Long Valley

This collection brings together stories set largely in and around California’s Salinas Valley, where farms, small towns and isolated households expose characters to desire, violence and disappointed hopes. Works such as “The Chrysanthemums”, “Flight”, “The Harness” and “Johnny Bear” examine marriages, family expectations, labour and the boundaries separating settled communities from the surrounding landscape.

The volume also includes the linked stories later known as The Red Pony, following young Jody Tiflin as encounters with animals, death and adult fallibility complicate his understanding of the ranch. Across the collection, Steinbeck presents Depression-era rural California without nostalgia, attending to economic insecurity as well as the emotional restrictions imposed by gender, age and social reputation.