The Wayward Bus

Steinbeck dedicated this novel to "Gwyn", presumably a reference to his second wife Gwyndolyn Conger. (They divorced less than a year after The Wayward Bus was published.) The novel's epigraph is a passage from Everyman, with its archaic English intact; the quotation refers to the transitory nature of humanity.Although considered one of Steinbeck's weaker novels at the time of its original publication, The Wayward Bus was financially more successful than any of his previous works.