Zane Grey

The Call of the Canyon Zane Grey

Publisher Marketing: What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West? Carley Burch laid the letter in her lap and gazed dreamily through the window. It was a day typical of early April in New York, rather cold and gray, with steely sunlight. Spring breathed in the air, but the women passing along Fifty-seventh Street wore furs and wraps. She heard the distant clatter of an L train and then the hum of a motor car. A hurdy-gurdy jarred into the interval of quiet. "Glenn has been gone over a year," she mused, "three months over a year-and of all his strange letters this seems the strangest yet." She lived again, for the thousandth time, the last moments she had spent with him. It had been on New-Year's Eve, 1918. They had called upon friends who were staying at the McAlpin, in a suite on the twenty-first floor overlooking Broadway. And when the last quarter hour of that eventful and tragic year began slowly to pass with the low swell of whistles and bells, Carley's friends had discreetly left her alone with her lover, at the open window, to watch and hear the old year out, the new year in. Glenn Kilbourne had returned from France early that fall, shell-shocked and gassed, and otherwise incapacitated for service in the army-a wreck of his former sterling self and in many unaccountable ways a stranger to her. Cold, silent, haunted by something, he had made her miserable with his aloofness. But as the bells began to ring out the year that had been his ruin Glenn had drawn her close, tenderly, passionately, and yet strangely, too. "Carley, look and listen!" he had whispered. Contributor Bio:  Grey, Zane Legendary author Zane Grey is known as the greatest storyteller of the American West. He was a major force in shaping the myths of the Old West. The author of more than 90 novels, there are over 40 million copies of his books in print. Among his most popular works are: Riders of the Purple Sage, and The Lone Star Ranger which was the basis for the television series and movie, The Lone Ranger. Many famous actors got their start in films based on Zane Grey novels, including: Gary Cooper, William Powell, Richard Arlen, Buster Crabbe, Shirley Temple and Fay Wray.