Cannery Row takes place on a small street lined with sardine fisheries in Monterey known as Cannery Row. It revolves around the people living there during the Great Depression: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a marine biologist based on Steinbecks friend Ed Ricketts; and Mack, the leader of a group of bums.
It is an attempt to capture the feeling and people of a place, the cannery district of Monterey, California, which is populated by a mix of those down on their luck and those who choose for other reasons not to live “up the hill” in the more respectable area of town.