East of Eden

Two families work the land of California's Salinas Valley from the 1860s to the First World War, between the dry eastern hills and the town of Salinas, with the fog and vice of Monterey to the west.

Samuel Hamilton

The Salinas Valley

Ch. 1

Steinbeck begins with the land itself, the long trough between the Gabilan and Santa Lucia ranges that shapes everyone who settles it. The valley's split between bright and dark hills sets the book's whole moral weather. It is the ground the Trasks and Hamiltons will both try to make something of.

Ch. 1

explicit The novel opens by naming the Salinas Valley outright and describing its geography, the light valley to the west and the dark hills to the east. Sited at a representative point mid-valley.

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