Zane Grey, the bestselling author of sixty-five Western novels, is one of the most recognized and respected writers of Western fiction. His works have been translated into twenty-three languages and have been made into more than one hundred movies. This box set includes four Zane Grey classics in paperback at a great value price: Robbers' Roost, Desert Heritage, Shepherd of Guadaloupe, and War Comes to the Big Bend . -- Robbers' Roost: A Western Story -- A classic story of imperiled love on the western ...
Read More
Zane Grey, the bestselling author of sixty-five Western novels, is one of the most recognized and respected writers of Western fiction. His works have been translated into twenty-three languages and have been made into more than one hundred movies. This box set includes four Zane Grey classics in paperback at a great value price: Robbers' Roost, Desert Heritage, Shepherd of Guadaloupe, and War Comes to the Big Bend . -- Robbers' Roost: A Western Story -- A classic story of imperiled love on the western frontiers of nineteenth-century America. "He was a young man in years, but he had the hard face and eagle eye of one matured in experience of that wild country. He bestrode a superb bay horse, dusty and travel-worn and a little lame. The rider was no light burden, judging from his height and wide shoulders; moreover, the saddle carried a canteen, a rifle, and a pack. From time to time he looked back over his shoulder at the magnificent long cliff wall, which resembled a row of colossal books with leaves partly open. It was the steady, watchful gaze of a man who had left events behind him." So begins Jim Wales's story in Robbers' Roost . While a battle rages between two outlaw gangs in a remote Utah canyon, Jim struggles to rescue Helen Herrick, who has been captured and held for ransom. Robbers' Roost tells the story of their personal struggle to escape the clutches of the murderous outlaws while simultaneously safeguarding their passion, one that is not likely to survive the beautiful, yet deadly, terrain and people of the old American West. -- Desert Heritage: A Western Story -- Jack Hare is an Easterner who has come west for his health. In Salt Lake City he is mistaken by Dene's outlaw gang for a spy and must flee the town to escape them. He is found suffering from exhaustion and exposure in rough country by the wealthy Mormon rancher August Naab. As he is nursed back to health at Naab's ranch, Hare becomes aware that Naab's holdings are being threatened by both Dene's rustlers and an unscrupulous Gentile land-grabber named Holderness. Hare also comes to know Mescal, originally an orphan of a Spanish father and Navajo mother, taken in by Naab and promised in marriage to his eldest son, Snap. August Naab does not believe in violent resistance to Holderness's incursions. To save Hare from Dene and his gang, Naab has him accompany Mescal to his sheep camp, located in an isolated valley fastness, and it is there that the two fall in love, even though Mescal knows that she is morally bound to marry Snap Naab. Packed with adventure, action, emotion, and unforgettable characters, Desert Heritage represents one of Zane Grey's finest literary achievements. And its vivid evocation of the Painted Desert of Arizona is without equal in the genre. -- Shepherd of Guadaloupe: A Western Story -- A soldier returns home to find his parents displaced and their property stolen in this classic Western. "He leaned propped against the rail of the great ship, in an obscure place aft, shadowed by the life-boats. It was the second night out of Cherbourg and the first time for him to be on deck. The ridged and waved Atlantic, but for its turbulence, looked like the desert undulating away to the uneven horizon. The roar of the wind in the rigging bore faint resemblance to the wind in the cottonwoods at home--a sound that had haunted him for all the long years of his absence. There was the same mystery in the black hollows of the sea as from boyhood he had seen and feared in the gloomy gulches of the foothills." So begins Zane Grey's The Shepherd of Guadaloupe . After surviving the brutality of the First World War, Clifton Forrest returns home to find that his childhood home was stolen from his family. With his parents robbed of their property and the a
Read Less
All of the novels in this collection are excellent novels. My personal favorite is Desert Heritage, the unexpurgated version of Heritage of the Desert which was what I call Zane Grey's first true "western" in 1910. It has everything a person has come to know belongs in a classic "western". Shepherd of Guadaloupe is a great romantic story of how a dying soldier comes home expecting to die, but for the love of a woman tries his best to live. War Comes to the Big Bend was first published as The Desert of Wheat in 1918 and deals with espionage, socialism, and the nefarious activities of a real organization at the time known as the IWW-Industrial Workers of the World-who wanted to over throw the United States. You will find no shoot outs in the streets or the like but you will follow a young man as he strives to be a man who must do his duty to his country during World War 1. Robber's Roost is more of the conventional "western". What everyone knows Zane Grey writes-the some of which one critic said could be written on the back of a stamp. How untrue and unfair. All of these are romances to be sure, yet only books Zane Grey could have written.
