Adam Trask

Adam Aron Trask is a soldier-turned-farmer who has devoted his life to creating a paradise in the Salinas Valley. After enduring a harsh military service and a troubled childhood at the hands of his own father, Adam seeks to build something pure and good—a home where his children might thrive untainted by the violence and cruelty he has witnessed. He is a man of fundamental decency and straightforwardness, viewing the world with an almost childlike openness that both sustains and endangers him.

His greatest sorrow is his wife Cathy Ames, whose departure and spiritual absence devastate him profoundly. Though he has resources and the respect of his community, Adam is emotionally isolated, caught between his desperate love for an unloving woman and his confusion over his sons' radically different temperaments. He represents the possibility of human goodness and redemption, yet remains vulnerable to betrayal precisely because his nature is so incapable of understanding malice.