Thomas Steinbeck death, Steinbeck lived with his wife Gail in Santa Barbara, California. According to his family, he died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 72. Fiction Contributor Thomas Steinbeck Thomas Myles Steinbeck (August 2, 1944 – August 11, 2016) was an American novelist, screenwriter, photographer, and journalist. He published numerous works of fiction, including short stories and novels. He was the elder son of American novelist John Steinbeck. Thomas ("Thom") Steinbeck was born in Manhattan, New York City, to American novelist John Steinbeck and his second wife, singer-composer Gwyndolyn Conger on August 2, 1944. His younger brother John Steinbeck IV,
John Steinbeck IV the tutelage of the politically powerful Coconut Monk, a silent tree-dwelling Buddhist yogi who adopted Steinbeck as a spiritual son. Amid the raging war, Steinbeck stayed in the monk's "peace zone", where the 400 monks who lived on the island hammered howitzer shell casings into bells. While in Saigon, Steinbeck participated in Michael Rubbo's 1970 documentary film "Sad Song of Yellow Skin", as part of a group of young American journalists practicing a New Journalism approach to covering the war. Steinbeck traveled back and forth between Asia and the United States several more times before settling in Boulder, Colorado, where