Zane Grey

The Desert of Wheat Illustrated Zane Grey

From the master of the western comes a novel full of romance and adventure. The novel begins: Late in June the vast northwestern desert of wheat began to take on a tinge of gold, lending an austere beauty to that endless, rolling, smooth world of treeless hills, where miles of fallow ground and miles of waving grain sloped up to the far-separated homes of the heroic men who had conquered over sage and sand. The son of a German Farmer in Washinton state during WWI, decides to join the Army to fight the Germans and "kill" the German part of his heritage. Along the way, he falls in love with the daughter of a rich farmer, and then has to protect her and himself from a worldwide labor organization that is reaking havoc all over the country to cause problems with the war effort. Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 - October 23, 1939) was an American dentist and author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American frontier. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his best-selling book. In addition to the commercial success of his printed works, they had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and television productions. His novels and short stories have been adapted into 112 films, two television episodes, and a television series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater.