John Steinbeck, an amazing father.

"You didn't grow up in the shadow of John Steinbeck. He put you on his shoulders and gave you all the light you wanted," the son said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he is working on his first novel after the 2002 release of "Down To A Soundless Sea," a critically acclaimed book of short stories.

By the time Thomas Steinbeck was 20, John Steinbeck (his father) had received the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for writing classics such as "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men."

But the younger Steinbeck has followed a winding journey to the point where he can carry on the family tradition without feeling he's constantly judged by his father's legacy. At 61, he is just now finding his own voice as an author.