East of Eden

Steinbeck retells Cain and Abel through two families in the Salinas Valley, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, over roughly fifty years. Brothers betray brothers, fathers favor one son and break the other, and the pattern repeats down the line. Steinbeck called this the book he was saving himself for, and he wrote it partly as a letter to his own young sons. It is long and it wanders, with side-characters who get their own chapters and earn them. The center is one Hebrew word, timshel, which the book translates as thou mayest. The argument is that you are not condemned to repeat your family. You may choose not to.