The Pearl

John Steinbeck · 1947 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Kino dives off La Paz and brings up a pearl the size of a gull's egg on the morning after a scorpion stings his infant son and the town doctor refuses to come out. The pearl already buys, in his head, the boy's treatment, a rifle, a church wedding and a school, and the whole town knows he has it before nightfall. Steinbeck built it from an anecdote he was told in Baja California and had already retold in the log of the Sea of Cortez expedition.

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