The Wayward Bus

STEINBECK, John.

The Wayward Bus.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. New York: The Viking Press, 1947.

8vo. [viii], 312 pp. Original red-brown cloth, the front board with the title in gilt and a blind-stamped illustration of the bus, spine lettered in gilt; publisher's top stain present. In the original unclipped first-issue dust jacket priced $2.75 on the front flap — the pictorial wraparound design by Robert Hallock, the driver's hands at the wheel on the front and the bus crossing the California hills past a roadside shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe across to the rear. Goldstone & Payne A23a; first printing of 100,000 copies (Firsts 17:1). Dedicated "For GWYN" — Gwyndolyn Conger Steinbeck, the author's second wife; the couple divorced the year after publication. In its original first-issue jacket, protected in an archival sleeve. Book sound, cloth tight, blind-stamped bus and gilt spine bright, internally clean with no previous-owner markings; jacket retains strong color across the front and central composition, the $2.75 price intact and unclipped.

The story turns on a single day's bus run from the crossroads of Rebel Corners, through floodwater and a washed-out bridge, toward San Juan de la Cruz. Juan Chicoy, half-Mexican and half-Irish, drives the line in a bus he has named Sweetheart; his wife Alice keeps the diner.

SKU TO-2026-143