Mice and Men by Jon Steinbeck

The novel, which takes place during the Great Depression, begins beside the Salinas River near Soledad, California, where two migrant workers, Lennie Small and George Milton, are walking on their way to a nearby ranch. They had recently escaped from a farm near Weed where Lennie, a mentally yet docile man, was wrongly accused of rape when he touched a woman to feel her soft dress. George is his physical opposite, a small man with good features. George scolds Lennie for playing with a dead mouse and warns him not to speak when they arrive at their new place of employment. When Lennie compla…