San Antonio College Library

Zane Grey was a disappointed aspirant to major league baseball and an unhappy dentist when he belatedly decided to take up writing at the age of thirty. He went on to become the most successful American authors of the 1920s, a significant figure in the early development of the film industry, and vital to the early popularity of the western.

"Zane Grey was the father of the Western... To learn more about nature, the uncompromising force that shaped the characters he devised, he became an explorer, a hunter, and a champion fisherman. [Gruber] had access to the incomplete manuscript of Grey's own autobiography, his private diaries and letters, and the family's memories and records. The full chronicle is here: The Ohio boyhood in the 1880's, college days as a University of Pennsylvania baseball...

His novels are legendary: Riders of the Purple Sage, Betty Zane, The Vanishing American, and The U.P. Trail. His characters are unforgettable: Jim Lassiter, Bern Venters, Lew Wetzel, Buck Duane, and Madeline Hammond. His settings are colorful, austere, and filled with romantic mystery. In the early twentieth century, Zane Grey not only defined the cowboy hero and captured the Western landscape, he created one of the most elaborate and memorable bodies...