The Moon is Down

Highly recommended for Steinbeck fans. It's a bit different than his more popular works, but he captures a certain humanity in the characters and the events that occur. Placing this book in the historical context, though, is more important.

Page 58 provides a good explanation of the point of this book.

If being picked up as a novel to read lightly, you might as well put it back down again. And if I hadn't known what this was meant to be ( WWII propaganda, enough so that people were put to death over owning a copy ), then I probably wouldn't have thought of what to look for, nor would I have enjoyed it as much as I did. Because of this, and taking into consideration the audience it was intended for, it was a well-crafted novel, thoughtful and a punch to the gut. As a “novel” distanced from meaning ( which I don't believe in doing, but might as well add this ), it's average. It's not exactly Steinbeck's best round of prose, though it does have its moments, and I often found myself wishing that more had been done with the material presented. Of course, it wasn't possible for him to have done more, but I digress. Either way, more than likely will be giving this a re-read in the future.