Paradise Pastures

Good-natured humor and biting satire. Drama and melodrama. Gothic, parody of Gothic, and even a sad fairy tale for adults, — it seems that there is simply no end to the genre diversity of the stories collected under the cover of Paradise Pastures. This book by Steinbeck, first published in 1932, can essentially be considered a novel only very conditionally, — in reality, we have before us a conceptual collection of stories united by the setting, — a quiet farming valley in California's countryside, — and the fate of an outsider, Bert Monroe, who dared to buy the land that all the valley's inhabitants consider cursed. Years pass. Life in the valley goes on as usual. And the locals keep waiting, with bated breath, — will the curse come true?..