22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY NOVEMBER 5-11, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding, unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east.” That description grounds the story in terrain Steinbeck knew from childhood. “The valley’s grasses, plants, animals and changing seasons shaped [Steinbeck’s] experience and his observation of nature,” Josephs says. By Chapter 3, the narrative expands beyond California, moving from the Hamilton family to Adam Trask’s childhood home in Connecticut. Steinbeck was writing with his young sons in mind, hoping to convey not just a literal family history, but something of where he came from and what formed him. The Salinas Valley gives that personal inheritance a physical shape: a place where memory, family, and the natural world meet, Josephs says. The Salinas Valley establishes the novel’s emotional and autobiographical ground, inviting readers to see landscape as part of identity and as a force that continues to echo through the families’ choices, which is a central theme of East of Eden. While the original Steinbeck text starts with the valley and ultimately describes the valley as a character, the Netflix series—featuring English actress Florence Pugh as Cathy and American actor Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask—does not start with the valley or describe the land. “There’s almost zero-world mapping. The show stays in fictionalized spaces,” says John Holland, founder of The Steinbeck Experience in Monterey, noting most domestic scenes are set in the Trask home, omitting other houses described in the book. “There’s surprisingly little connection to physical historical Salinas.” The closest physical link in the Netflix show to the book is when Kate (Cathy’s new name after moving to a Salinas brothel) visits Dr. Wilde’s office for medicine—and poison—in Episode 4. Historically his office was in the Monterey County Bank building, which still stands today. Good and Evil Cathy Ames enters the story surrounded by unanswered questions: What has shaped her, and how much of her cruelty is choice? In the novel, she is presented as profoundly destructive—a person who can read other people’s needs and turn them to her advantage. “The one thing that may not be forgiven a witch is her ability to distress people to make them restless and uneasy and even envious,” Steinbeck wrote in Chapter 8. “Cathy learned when she was young that sexuality, with all its attendant yearnings and pains, jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing impulse humans have… that by manipulation and use of this one part of people she could gain and keep power over nearly everyone. It was at once a weapon and a threat. It was irresistible.” The Netflix adaptation gives more attention to the abuse she endures, adding context without erasing the harm she causes. “I like how [the series] portrayed Cathy, how they gave her a little bit more substance than just saying she’s evil the way it is portrayed in the original text,” Garcia says. By the time she leaves her family in Episode 4 and moves to Salinas, she becomes “Kate.” There, in her life in a brothel, her talent for reading people turns into a kind of power. She also stands up for the women who work there. That can look like compassion (and it may be compassion), but it also shows how Cathy can make herself indispensable. She offers help while building influence in a time where women have few safe ways to claim control. That tension makes her more than a What Our Critics Say So how was the show? The team that watched all seven episodes and reported this story weighs in. 7.5 / 10 The show successfully tells the main story in the book. The feminist approach was much needed, and Florence Pugh is a perfect Cathy/Kate. Without her, the series would be less convincing. -Agata Popęda 8 / 10 Netflix series creator Zoe Kazan did an amazing job of selecting some of the best actors to bring this story to life. Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, Mike Feist and Hoon Lee deserve Emmy Awards for their roles, and the costumes were beautiful. Yet, it’s not a perfect score as the beginning drags slightly, although the pace eventually picks up as the narrative progresses. The Alice in Wonderland theme was an interesting addition, and the show would have worked well without it. And since it was not filmed in the Salinas Valley, it also loses a point. -Royvi Hernandez 7 / 10 I like that the show tries to answer why Cathy is who she is. But the Salinas Valley, prominent in the book, is missed in the series. It features beautiful images and lots of shallow depth of field (blurry backgrounds) but feels claustrophobic. As a viewer, I didn’t get a sense of how Salinas, King City or the Valley looked or felt. Filming in New Zealand left it feeling like anonymous locations. -Celia Jiménez CELIA JIMÉNEZ CELIA JIMÉNEZ CELIA JIMÉNEZ At John Steinbeck’s grave in Garden of Memories Memorial Park, fans leave pens, pencils and coins. The Steinbeck House in Salinas is a Victorian home where the writer was born and grew up. It is now a restaurant. Roosevelt Elementary School, formerly West End School, is where fictional twin brothers Cal and Aron Trask studied. From left, Jonah Wren Phillips as young Aron, Hoon Lee as Lee, Bodhi Aisher as young Cal and Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask in the Netflix show. COURTESY OF NETFLIX
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