I was a little intimidated by this chunkster, but needn't have been. It's true that it dragged a bit in spots and included some rather heavy-handed moralizing on the part of the narrator, but overall it read more like an old but clever relative telling an important family story -- a kind of family story for the country as a whole, perhaps. 
 Plus, the prose was simply lovely. The content was not often lovely, no, mostly quite the opposite actually, but Steinbeck was unquestionably a master of prose. 
 Full review posted here: Lone Star on a Lark