Carol Henning Steinbeck was John's first wife and the woman who edited and inspired his best work. The dedication to The Grapes of Wrath reads, in part: "To Carol who willed this book," and in a very real sense she willed to life all of his fiction of the 1930s. Energetic, creative, spunky and intelligent, Carol devoted herself to her husband's writing. It's an oft-told tale, a woman hitching her star to a man's steady sense of purpose.