The Wayward Bus

by John Steinbeck (Author)Publisher: The Viking Press (1947)Hardcover8.25 x 5.5 inches, 312 pages
The Wayward Bus is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, originally published in 1947. The novel's epigraph is a passage from 15th-century English play Everyman, with its archaic English intact; the quotation refers to the transitory nature of humanity. Although considered one of Steinbeck's weaker novels at the time of its original publication, The Wayward Bus was financially more successful than any of his previous works.
Steinbeck dedicated this novel to "Gwyn", thought to be a reference to his second wife Gwyndolyn Conger. The couple divorced less than a year after the book was published.-----------------------John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (/'sta?nb?k/; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American author. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters," and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937). The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.