


5 years later, the Dust Bowl occurred leading crops to die. He then published his 1st book after a while, the great Depression occured, and then later he married Carol Henning (1st wife). John Steinbeck was an American author who graduates from Salinas High School and enrolled at Stanford University but he left without a degree and traveled to New York City to start his life as a writer and then returned to California and settled there at Lake Tahoe. His father, John Ernst, Sr., was a miller and local politician, and his mother, Olivia Hamilton, taught school. John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, to a middle-class family in Salinas, California. Significance: It shows the harshness of the Dust Bowl & Great Depression and trigger sympathy for the struggles of migrant farmworkers like the Joads family.
