To tie into the forthcoming 75th anniversary of the publication of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Penguin is partnering with the National Steinbeck Center on a unique event. The publisher, which will be releasing a handful of new editions of the novel on the day it cites as its brithday--April 14, 2014--will also take part in a cross country trek organized by the National Steinbeck Center.

The novel traces the Depression-era journey of the Joad family from Oklahoma to California. So, from October 4-14, the Steinbeck Center will, working with a collection of artists, retrace that trip along Route 66, wending through Texas, into New Mexico and Arizona, before arriving in California. On the trip, the artists will collect oral histories from people they meet, and those stories will appear in an exhibition at the Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Calif., May 2-4.

The Penguin Book Truck, and the Penguin Pushcart, will be travelling on the Steinbeck Center trip, stopping at selected locations to sell books by the novelist. Then, on April 14, the publisher release a new hardcover edition of Grapes of Wrath, along with a limited leather bound edition and a Penguin Classics edition. Additionally Penguin will be releasing Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw's On Reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' as a paperback original.