Thom Steinbeck, the elder of Steinbeck's two sons, was ten years old when his father inscribed this copy of Sweet Thursday to him. A touching association copy.

In a letter to his first wife Gwyn from this year [Paris, July 24, 1954] Steinbeck writes: "We are getting a boat on the Seine for Thom's birthday and for his main present I got in Munich a racing car which runs with a real diesel engine...Thom has dropped some stomach, but not as much as he should. They are swimming every day and walking for miles...They are fine boys and very sweet and I think the summer has been very good for them...I do hope you will get at Thom's block against reading and writing because that is what it is, a kind of a panic. He has told me that he knows things, which he does, but that he simply cannot write them down. When it is insisted that he write answers he goes into a blue funk, but he is quite capable of reciting in great detail anything he has been told. If the block could be removed he would be ahead of his age, not behind."--Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (New York, 1975, pp. 486-87).