Having read every last book of Steinbeck's ouvre, I turned to The Long Valley recently when driving through central California. It was the first time in almost 30 years I had cracked the book open.

Reading it now, one finds so many early versions of later stories Steinbeck would write: "Flight" foreshadows the tragic chase found in The Pearl; "The Harness" looks to the superior short story collection, The Pastures of Heaven; the bizarre, sensual tale, "The Snake," features Ed Ricketts, central character of the fictional Cannery Row and non-fictional The Log from the Sea of Cortez; "The Raid" would come back even more vividly in the books, In Dubious Battle and--in Root's words to his attackers--The Grapes of Wrath. Throughout the book, I realized that I was reading drafts and sketches that were fully realized in later, longer works.

My favorite story in the collection is "Johnny Bear," a fascinating take-down of a prominent family in a village called Loma. The "Bear" of the title is a mentally handicapped man with a gift for mimickry. Johnny Bear foreshadows Lenny in Of Mice and Men as well as Tularecito, a character in The Pastures of Heaven. The way Steinbeck frames the story--told from the POV of a foreman on a dredging unit trying to drain a nearby swamp--and his use of imagery really kept my attention. The ending was quite a surprise, too.

This isn't Steinbeck's best work, but it is a very good one. For Steinbeck fans, I would recommend it, but I would reserve judgment on the author himself until after people have read the better-developed novels I mentioned above.