"Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding."

A family flees the Oklahoma dust bowl during the 1930s and, determined to stay together, migrates to California to battle the exploitation of corporate farming.

I love this book! I don't remember if I was "forced" to read Steinbeck in high school or not but he now holds a special place in my aged heart. His writing is clear and direct and accessible, something I greatly appreciate but am not fortunate enough to encounter with every classic I read.

"There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do."

This was an enjoyable book containing an undercurrent of feminist and man-over-religion elements up until the end. Upon devouring the conclusion, however, I woke up my husband with my incessant, blithering sobbing because I was reduced by the way these characters had wormed into my heart.

I appreciated Steinbeck's use of the proverbial "chorus," how he would set the ethos using an omniscient narrator before zooming in on his characters to apply the times to their lives.

Given how hard I went after Hannah's Four Winds, I cannot tell you how glad I was to see a couple "Californians" who were human beings possessing a speck of empathy.

Overall, I felt like this portrayed a perfect balance of human strength and endurance during extreme hardship while somehow tapping into their compassion and just plain generosity in the face of unrelenting adversity.