She planted that terror of debt so deeply in her children that even now, in a changed economic pattern where indebtedness is a part of living, I become restless when a bill is two days overdue. Olive never accepted the time-payment plan when it became popular. A thing bought on time was a thing you did not own and for which you were in debt. She saved for things she wanted, and this meant that the neighbours had new gadgets as much as two years before we did.

The book is very different in tone from Steinbeck's amoral and ecological stance in earlier works like Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. The story is about two traveling ranch workers George and Lennie trying to work up enough money to buy their own farm/ranch. Soon after he began work on East of Eden (1952) which he considered his best work.

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (February 27 1902 – December 20 1968) was an American writer. As the author of twenty-seven books including sixteen novels six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.