East of Eden
By: John Steinbeck.
Edition: 1986 Reissue (2)
Publisher: Viking
Published: 1986
Place of publication: New York, N.Y., USA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 778
ISBN-13: 9780670287383
Copyright date: 1980
Subjects: Children of prostitutes -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Sibling rivalry -- Fiction; Brothers -- Fiction; Salinas River Valley (Calif.) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: A dozen years after the epic Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck published his next major work, East of Eden, an American saga spanning the time from the Civil War to the First World War, from a Connecticut farm to a California valley. Center stage is occupied by two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, the latter being Steinbeck's own forebears, a gusty Irish clan who had settled in California's Salinas Valley years before the fictional Adam Trask and his scheming wife Cathy arrived in 1900.

As Steinbeck traces the families through three generations, he retells the biblical story of Adam and Cain and Abel, and his caracters are forced to reenact the ancient drama of exile to the east of an slways elusive Eden.

In his journal John Steinbeck described the theme of this passionate, vital book, one of his greatest, as "the existence, the balance, the battle, and the history in the permanent war between wisdoma nd ignorance, light and darkness - good and evil." 

(jacket flap)
Notes: Reissue
US/CAN