Today we're continuing our series on John Steinbeck. This year, we've been reading through all of Steinbeck's major works. We started with The Pastures of Heaven, and To a God Unknown is the second book in the series. We’ll be doing two podcast episodes on this novel for a couple of different reasons.

First and foremost, it’s probably the strangest, most confusing, and most exploratory of Steinbeck’s works.

I wanted to get a few different perspectives on the meaning of this book—the characters, the plot, the context, and some of the major themes. Our first guest is Dr. Daniel Rivers. Dr. Rivers is an associate professor of American Studies and Literature at San Jose State University and also serves as the director of the Martha Heesley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State.

We had a great conversation. We talked about a lot of things, including Dr. Rivers’s own research and writing on this book.

There’s a lot to learn from this discussion, and I know you'll enjoy it.