John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He and his three sisters were raised by their parents in this small town in the Salinas Valley, a locale that figures prominently in much of the novelist's work. Though he attended Stanford University intermittently from 1919 to 1925, he never graduated. In 1925 he left California for New York, where he worked for a time on the New York American. Eventually fired from his newspaper position and discouraged by his inability to sell any of his stories, Steinbeck returned to California and took up odd jobs while continuing to write fiction. After being rejected by seven publishers, Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, was finally accepted in 1929. It was not a best seller, nor was his second, To a God Unknown (1933), but in the latter Steinbeck began writing about the area in which he had spent his boyhood. He continued that practice in his third novel, Tortilla Flat, which proved immensely popular and established him as a new voice in American fiction. ...