Tells a story about the strange relationship of two migrant workers, who are able to realize their dreams of an easy life until one of them succumbs to his weakness for soft, helpless creatures and strangles the farmer's wife. Tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him. With illustrations from the movie starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.

The saga of three generations of the Trask and Hamilton families in the early 1900's in Northern California. East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean and read by thousands as the book that brought...

Rebel without a cause (1955): The adolescent son of a well-to-do family gets into trouble with other kids and the police. East of Eden (1955): A wayward Salinas Valley youth vies for the affection of his hardened father with his favored brother. Cat on a hot tin roof (1958): A drama of the problems of a wealthy but decadent family in the South. A streetcar named Desire (1951): Set in the steamy squalor of New Orleans, the story of a neurotic woman's...

Adam and Charles Trask grow up in the shadow of their father, Cyrus. Cyrus prefers Adam, inciting jealousy in his younger son. Adam is signed up for the cavalry, while Charles works on the family farm. Reuniting years later, the brothers live in peace until a beautiful woman nearly beaten to death arrives on their front porch. Adam nurses her back to health and falls blindly in love. But Cathy hides a cruel past. Adam and Cathy marry and have twin...

America between the Civil War and World War I serves as the background for the struggles of the Trask family.