To a God Unknown

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	Due 04-23-2024

Previously published: 1993.
Introduction by Robert DeMott -- Suggestions for further reading -- Note on the text -- To a god unknown -- Explanatory notes.
On his new ranch in California, Joseph Wayne sees a huge tree as the symbol of his father's spirit. But then one of his brothers, terrified by Joseph's pagan beliefs, kills the tree.

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Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Mystical submitted by kferguson on August 20, 2016, 6:33pm Mystical mixed with primitive ritual

Perfect title for a near perfect book submitted by CarolSeidl on November 13, 2020, 2:35pm Like everything else I’ve read by Steinbeck, I found this book to be exceptional. The story follows the life of Joseph Wayne, who leaves the security of his father’s farm in Vermont to strike out on his own and establish a ranch in California. Steinbeck’s imagery, as well as his main character’s introspection, transport the reader to another time and place. It’s mind-boggling to consider how it must have felt for men like Wayne to head into a vast wilderness and stake out a homestead without much more than a horse, some hand tools, and a rifle.

Wayne’s vulnerability, determination, solitude, and devotion to his land gradually lead him to create his own personalized version of pantheistic worship. His three brothers, who join him after the ranch is established, are also devoted to their own unique idols. Steinbeck examines man’s natural tendency to explain the unexplainable and ward off misfortune through ritual, prayer, sacrifice, and other spiritual rites. At the same time, his characters are more tightly connected to concrete aspects of reality—land, work, survival, nature—than are people living in today’s high-tech, fast-paced world.

Steinbeck spent five years working and re-working this story, basing it on an unfinished play that one of his close college friends had written. Human spirituality is a complicated subject to tackle but Steinbeck navigates a variety of conflicting beliefs with delicacy and compassion. I’m not sure he gets everything right, especially with respect to his female characters, but the setting, struggles, and ideas of this book are well worth lingering over.