Cup of Gold

A historical novel of the pirate Henry Morgan by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men.

As a boy in seventeenth-century Wales, Henry hears tales of a pirate’s adventures and grows up to become Sir Henry Morgan, the notoriously vicious privateer who rules the Spanish Main and terrorizes the coasts of Cuba and America. His goal is to capture Panama—the “cup of gold”—and to possess the woman known as La Santa Roja, the Red Saint. But one of those dreams will prove impossible . . .

This swashbuckling tale was the first novel written by John Steinbeck, the author renowned for such classics as East of Eden and The Pearl. Inspired by the life of a real historical figure, Cup of Gold reveals an unseen side to this American literary giant.