The Moon is Down, a novel by John Steinbeck, 1942 second printing before publication.

Written by John Steinbeck. First published March, 1942, this edition second printing before publication. The Viking Press, New York.

Chapter One

"By ten-forty-five it was all over. The town was occupied, the defenders defeated, and the war finished. The invader had prepared for this campaign as carefully as he had for larger ones. On this Sunday morning the postman and the policeman had gone fishing in the boat of Mr. Corell, the popular storekeeper. He had lent them his trim sailboat for the day. The postman and the policeman were several miles at sea when they saw the small, dark transport, loaded with soldiers, go quietly past them. As officials of the town, this was definitely their business, and these two put about, but of course the battalion was in possession by the time they could make port. The policeman and the postman could not even get into their own offices in the Town Hall, and when they insisted on their rights they were taken prisoners of war and locked up in the town jail."

From the cover:

"The Moon is Down continues the experiment begun with Of Mice and Men, that of writing a short novel having the time and place disciplines of the stage. The scene of the book is any conquered country in any time. The author has purposely refrained from making literally true to actual events. Although the weapons and ideologies may be of the present, they are only vehicles for the theme that a free brave people is unconquerable."

John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968) was an American novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for his realistic and imaginative works. He was born in Salinas, California to a family of moderate means. He attended Stanford University but did not graduate. He moved to New York in 1925 to pursue a career as a freelance writer but returned to California after failing to establish himself. He wrote several novels about the social and economic problems of the working class and the victims of the Great Depression, such as Of Mice and Men (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952).

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Condition: Very Good/Good. Dust jacket: Corners are bumped; rubbing along front fore edges and edges of spine; tanning along the spine; chipped at head and tail of the spine; one small closed tear on the front, lower right, and small open tear at lower left; very small closed tear on the back, lower edge; light soiling from handling on the back. Inside: Owner's bookplate on front fly leaf, and light tanning of page edges, else pages are clean, undamaged, and complete.