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1-Page Summary of East of Eden

In the late 19th century, a man named Samuel Hamilton settles in the Salinas Valley. He brings his wife, Liza from Ireland with him. Although he’s well respected by other people in town, he never becomes wealthy and ends up having 9 kids with her.

Adam Trask and his wife Cathy move to California where he becomes friends with Samuel Hamilton. Adam lived on a farm in Connecticut with his brother, Charles before moving to California. However, the two brothers never got along because their father favored Adam over Charles. After the death of their father, Cyrus leaves them both a large fortune which they squander on expensive items such as horses and houses that they don’t need. Even though Adam doesn’t know it yet, Cathy is actually a prostitute who murdered her parents for money and drugged him on their wedding night so she could sleep with his brother instead of him.

Adam and Cathy move to California after Adam kills Charles in a fit of rage. In California, Cathy learns that she is pregnant with twins and has an abortion because she wants nothing more to do with her husband. She then leaves the household and becomes a prostitute again. Adam lies about his gunshot wound so as not to get caught for murder.

Cathy wins Faye’s trust and poisons her. She then takes over the brothel and blackmails powerful men in Salinas with photographs of them having sex with her prostitutes. To protect Adam, Samuel Hamilton doesn’t tell him that Cathy works at a brothel.

As the twins grow up, Aron shows he has his father’s good heart while Cal exhibits his mother’s ruthlessness and tendency to manipulate. At a certain point in their lives, Cal actively struggles against his dark side and prays to God to make him more like Aron. Adam is still sad after Cathy leaves; Samuel finally tells him that Cathy left because she was unhappy with her marriage. Samuel dies soon afterward.

After Samuel’s funeral, Adam goes to visit Cathy at the brothel. She offers to have sex with him in order to keep him in the brothel and prove that he is no better than she is.

After beating Cathy, Adam becomes a more committed father to his sons. He decides to move the family out of the ranch and into town so that Aron and Cal can go to school with other kids. They are in seventh grade when Aron meets Abra, who is nice but whose dad is corrupt. Meanwhile, Cal continues struggling with his dark side and discovers the truth about his mother—that she was evil. However, Lee advises him not to be constrained by her legacy because God wants each individual to choose their own moral destiny rather than being forced into it based on what they inherit from their parents. This idea encapsulated by the Hebrew word timshel (meaning “thou mayest”) counters Cal’s fatalistic idea that he has inherited his mother’s evil and sinfulness.

Aron, who is more religious than his brother Adam, eventually leaves to attend university. Meanwhile, Adam squanders the family fortune and is not as smart or competitive as Aron was.

Cal and Will, Samuel’s son, are able to get the money back that his father lost in a failed business venture. They buy beans at low prices from local farmers and sell them for higher prices to British buyers during World War I.

Aron is miserable at Stanford and he comes home to visit his brother Adam. He’s excited to see him, but Adam is upset by a gift from Cal—money that Cal stole from farmers. Adam feels that it’s dishonest money and tells Cal to give it back. This makes Cal angry because he thinks that Adam likes Aron more than him. In a fit of rage, he tells Aron the truth about their mother, Cathy (that she was a prostitute). When they go to the brothel where she works, they find out that Cathy died there after overdosing on morphine. She left her entire fortune—part inherited from Charles (her husband) and part earned through blackmailing people for sex—to Aron.