In the Salinas Valley, Samuel Hamilton grows his family exponentially. With every child born, Samuel builds another addition to his home. However, Samuel’s consistent cheery disposition pairs poorly with his lack of business acumen, so the large family continues to live in poverty. His second son, Will, breaks this cycle and becomes a wealthy man thanks to luck, a business mindset, and the rise of the automobile industry. Samuel’s other children all have their own personalities and talents as well:

All in all it was a good firm-grounded family, permanent, and successfully planted in the Salinas Valley, not poorer than many and not richer than many either. It was a well-balanced family with its conservatives and its radicals, its dreamers and its realists (43).

Samuel’s wife, Liza, raises her children well. She continues to be diligently conservative—until a malady leads her to “medicine” in the form of alcohol, when she finally loosens up.

Charles lives on the family farm and works it on his own. Every two weeks, he visits the local sex workers—the only human interaction he regularly has. He misses his brother dearly, as he falsely remembers the time before Adam joined the army as a happy period for the two of them.