Elaine Steinbeck, widow of John Steinbeck, has died after a lengthy illness. Elaine was Steinbeck’s third wife; he said he had the happiest marriage with her. When Steinbeck died in 1968, Elaine took his ashes back from New York so that they could be interred in the family plot in California, remembering that he had once said: “No man should be buried in alien soil.”