20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY NOVEMBER 5-11, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com That contrast is especially important to the novel’s idea of timshel—the possibility of choice, a central theme. “Steinbeck took the word and he very much in some ways made it what he needed it to mean,” says Lisa Josephs, archivist at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. “And even in the biblical story of Cain and Abel, we surely do get a point of choice. It’s because God is telling Cain, ‘You can be its master. You have the choice. You have the capacity.’ Steinbeck is reflecting the overall values in some of the biblical stories.” The Hamiltons’ actions show kindness as something people can choose and practice. Liza and Olive Hamilton also help broaden the family portrait. Their presence gives the book a wider view of women’s lives and choices, rather than making Cathy the only example of womanhood. While the Netflix series keeps Samuel Hamilton, he gets much less room to develop as a character. “They don’t really give much of a backstory. They don’t really give much of a connection,” says Salinas resident Gracie Garcia, who volunteers at the Steinbeck House and has read the book and watched the Netflix series. “The Hamiltons come across as supporting characters instead of a family whose values help illuminate the Trasks’ choices.” Ultimately, the Hamiltons matter because they show that goodness is not merely an idea, it’s expressed through everyday choices, relationships and acts of care. The book gives those choices room to resonate. The series preserves the family, but its compressed storytelling leaves less time to feel how deeply their presence shapes the world around them. Geographically, the Hamiltons’ story reaches beyond South County. The Garden of Memories cemetery in Salinas holds real graves associated with the Hamilton family and Steinbeck. Together, the ranch country, town streets, station and cemetery form a landscape where family history and fiction overlap. To follow the Hamiltons through East of Eden is to travel through Steinbeck’s imagined world—and through the real Salinas Valley that helped shape it. King City In the book, King City is more than a dot on the map. It’s a place where many of the characters travel to for news, medicine, work and the railroad. Downtown King City is a destination where characters gather, trade, seek help and board trains for Salinas. It’s a small town set against the broad, changing landscape of the Salinas Valley. There are 48 mentions of King City in Steinbeck’s novel (and four in the TV series). At the turn of the 20th century, King City is remote, and its remoteness matters. Travel takes time; the train station and sparse town life remind readers how far the characters are from help, company and modernity. “In the book, King City was there to create the aspect of isolation; [Adam Trask] is emotionally isolated. He doesn’t want to interact with anyone due to the fact that his light, the love left. He doesn’t even want to work the land because his wife left him,” Garcia says. After Cathy leaves, Adam is left with his baby sons and household servant Lee, and grief draws him inward. The land he has acquired (relatively near King City, or a day’s horseback journey from Salinas) does not become a refuge or a fresh start. Instead, the difficult work of farming and the vastness around him echo the emotional emptiness he cannot overcome, which is also presented in Episode 5 of the Netflix series. The screen adaptation preserves some of this atmosphere, but its quick transitions and sweeping views can make the region feel less isolated. The book gives distance a weight of its own. King City therefore becomes part of Adam’s story: a demanding place where physical solitude mirrors the loneliness of a man trying to rebuild his family and himself. Salinas River The Salinas River “winds and twists up the center” of Salinas Valley “until it falls at last into Monterey Bay,” readers learn in the first sentence of the book. With little streams slipping out of the hill canyons, in the winter of wet years, it overflows. It can carry a cow or a pig to the sea. In the summer, the Salinas River becomes an underwater river, and the blue ribbon that cuts the valley disappears from the landscapes completely. As Shillinglaw observes in Steinbeck’s Landscapes, this “sometimes” river is the source of life—and death—in Salinas Valley. The dilemma if after purchasing the land, there will be enough water underneath it to have a house and a ranch, is a central problem in East of Eden. In the TV series, executive producer Zoe Kazan decided to film in New Zealand’s South Island to recreate natural waterways and landscapes of Salinas Valley. They drew on the region’s rivers, lakes, mountain ranges and pastoral terrain, using settings like Central Otago and the Hawkdun Range to evoke the untouched environment. Gabilan Mountains and Santa Lucia Mountains In the novel, the setting is not just scenery. It reflects the characters’ inner lives and helps carry the story’s concerns with choice and the struggle between good and evil. “I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother,” reads the introduction to the novel. “The Santa Lucias CELIA JIMÉNEZ CELIA JIMÉNEZ KAREN VANDERWALL JERNIGAN COURTESY OF NETFLIX The Hamiltons, John Steinbeck’s maternal family, are buried at the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas, shown in this historic photo. A view from Metz Road looking west shows the Gabilan Mountains in the foreground and Santa Lucias in the background. The Salinas River flows through the Salinas Valley. Florence Pugh plays Cathy/Kate in the Netflix series.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==