'i write as usual because i have never been able to trust speech as communication of anything except love and desire or hustling'. To John Steinbeck, who hated to use the telephone, letter writing was a vital form of connection and he wrote his prolific letters as a warm-up exercise each day before tackling his work. Beginning with Steinbeck's early life in California, the letters follow him through his novels, three marriages and many travels to his last days in Sag Harbor, New York. They illuminate his thoughts on people met and loved or hated; on women, and children; on the state of the world; and on his own creative process. A Life in Letters reveals Steinbeck as nothing else has - and as nothing else could.