John Steinbeck's Homes (part 2)

After John Steinbeck published his masterpiece "Grapes of Wrath" and won a Pulitzer Prize for literature, he and his wife Carol moved back to Pacific Grove in 1941. They separated soon afterwards and John moved to New York City. He married again, separated again, and moved back to the Steinbeck cottage at 147 11th Street in 1948. John met and married his third wife, Elaine, in Carmel in 1949 and they moved to New York. He turned the family cottage over to his sister, Beth Ainsworth, in the 1950s, returning for only brief visits before his death in 1968. A silver box containing his ashes arrived at the cottage on Christmas Eve that year and sat in the garden for two days before the memorial service at Point Lobos, then burial in a family plot in Salinas. After Mrs. Ainsworth died in 1992, the family kept the cottage and still uses it as a private home.

(Photo: John Steinbeck's cottage in Pacific Grove. Courtesy of the owner.)