“It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.”

The Red Pony is a short episodic novella about a young boy of ten named Jody Tiflin who grows up on a farm in the Salinas Valley in California with his father, his mother, a hired hand named Billy Buck, and a collection of dogs and cats and farm animals. He is a little hellion who crushes good fruit for the fun of it, kills birds, tortures dogs, and cheats at his chores, but he can also be diligent if he is working toward his own aims. In a series of connected vignettes, we witness several formative episodes in the boy’s life as he encounters the reality of birth and death. His experiences are often unforgiving, and like many of John Steinbeck’s books, this one is full of sadness, pain, and regret. It has the same kind of pessimism tinged by a longing for the past that the author is known for, along with his characteristically strong evocations of bygone eras of American history and depictions of raw human emotions. It’s very short—it could easily be read in one sitting—and lacks the punch of some of his other novellas that tell cohesive stories, but there are a few very touching moments within its pages.