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He has written about mice and men, and a few wrathful grapes, however at his novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck sets his sights a bit high and takes on the Book of Genesis. That is right--our guy Steinbeck might have been writing in 1952 and based his story during that awkward time when the 19th century became the 20th, but his subject matter comes from manner further back.

But even though Steinbeck stepped into religious territory, Easy of Eden is still chock full of all the classic Steinbeck ingredients... in which we mean that it takes place in California's Central Valley.

What, you didn't expect him to change that much, did you?

But let us talk storyline. You've probably already got this: Adam and Even reside at the Garden of Eden, get expelled thanks to Eve's snake-dealing shenanigans, are exiled, have two sons named Cain and Abel, Cain kills Abel when God likes Abel's present better, and then Cain is forced to wander the property with a mark on him so that people don't simply up and murder him. Tale as old as time and we've heard it all before, right?

Except that East of Eden shakes things up a little bit, and by a little bit, we mean that it changes around everything.

Adam and Charles Trask are two competitive brothers with daddy issues. Adam marries Cathy, attracts out her to California, she gives birth to twins, and everything is hunky dory in paradise until Cathy shoots Adam and leaves to go conduct a brothel.

Whoa. Don't remember that happening in Paradise, now do you?

But then we have the story of Adam's twin sons, Aron and Cal, and if you thought Adam's and Charles's daddy problems were bad, then you're about to see them taken to a completely different level. Throw in an ingenious Irish-American farmer and also a sage Chinese-American servant as side-characters seeing and commenting as this whole train wreck unfolds, and you've got yourself a story.

East of Eden was Steinbeck's magnum opus (which is Latin for "really big deal") following The Grapes of Wrath, and it's easily one of his most popular books. But it is not only important because it helped acquire Steinbeck the Nobel Prize and all (though that's kind of a big deal); it deals with big ideas too. We are talking important themes: the story of Genesis, the creation of the planet, and also the beginning of humankind. Does that cover everything? And you believed Steinbeck simply wrote about fruit.

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