The Pastures of Heaven

Steinbeck was a young man and unknown writer when he wrote and first published this book, but you wouldn't know it by the beautiful prose and the moving set of stories, all taking place in Pastures of Heaven, an idilic valley in early-20th-century Monterey County, California. This is an accessible book, populated with a diverse group of memorable characters that reflect many aspects of human nature. Also very present is Steinbeck's love for the natural world and the places in the California Central Coast where he was born and grew up alongside the simple people. But this book transcends regionalisms and it is beautiful literature that can be enjoyed by anyone anywhere, decades after its conception. While many people would recommend to read first Steinbeck's tougher books such as "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men", I say "Pastures of Heaven", despite being a relatively obscure book in his career, would serve as a fine introduction to his art, particularly if the reader is not looking for the strong social themes of his best-known works. On the same vein, "The Long Valley", published years later and depicting a more mature writing style, is another terrific series of short-stories taking place in the same world of Salinas Valley/Monterey ("Steinbeck Country").

More a book of short stories than a real novel, The Pastures of Heaven is one of my favorite of Johnny Steinbeck's. The book consists of ten stories centered around the very different and very realistic groups of people living in the California valley. Bittersweet is a good way to describe most of the stories as most seem to end tragically and hit where it hurts. Steinbeck, as always, tells the stories as a passive observer with a great eye for detail and leaves it to us to form our own opinions on the characters and events. Each story will have you debating the characters' motives and actions. Easy to read and hard to put down.

Pastures of Heaven and The Long Valley are a matched set in the Steinbeck library. The two should probably be included together as a single work. It's difficult to separate the two books because they overlap so. With a writer of the Steinbeck sort a reader might experience difficulty declaring, "This is my favorite." I agree completely. However, if John Steinbeck had never written Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, and Travels with Charlie, I'd probably have to say Pastures of Heaven and The Long Valley were my favorites

My mother, not a reader herself but trusting that anything sold by the Baptists & titled "The Pastures of Heaven" had to be OK, bought this book from a clearance table at the Baptist Book Store in Dallas TX as a Christmas present for (then) 8-year-old me. I devoured it at 8 and--except for "Travels With Charley"--still love it more than anything else Steinbeck wrote. The crystal-clear (to a grownup) allusions to prostitution & incest sailed right over my innocent head, but the funny or tragic (usually both) stories of the wildly disparate kinds of people who settled in the Salinas Valley (can anyone flesh out fictional characters like Steinbeck does, and with so few adjectives?), and the image of how that beautiful green valley must have looked to the pioneers after their ordeal of mountains & desert, have stayed with me for almost 60 years. I'm now going to order a copy to replace the barely-hanging-together one inscribed "From Mom & Dad, Christmas 1944". (Yellowed "Clearance $.25" sticker still on the back.)

Steinbeck at his best. This is a collection of short stories loosely connected that paint a picture of a California slowly maturing from its infancy to its adolescence.Well worth the read.