Book
East of Eden
Buy the book from:
Audio available
Across several generations in California’s Salinas Valley, the fortunes of the Trask and Hamilton families repeatedly intersect. Adam Trask settles in the valley after a damaged childhood and a difficult relationship with his brother Charles, but his marriage to the manipulative Cathy Ames ends in betrayal. Their twin sons, Cal and Aron, grow up beneath the burden of family secrecy and their father’s idealised expectations.
The novel moves from the decades after the American Civil War towards the First World War while reworking the biblical stories of Cain and Abel. Through Samuel Hamilton, Lee and the Trask family, Steinbeck examines inheritance, jealousy, agricultural change and the possibility of moral choice expressed through the idea of timshel: that a person may choose whether to master destructive impulses.
More by the author
Other books by John Steinbeck
