Adam Larey gazed with hard and wondering eyes down the silent current of the red river upon which he meant to drift away into the desert. The Rio Colorado was no river to trust. It chafed at its banks as if to engulf them; muddy and thick it swirled and glided along in flood, sweeping in curves back and forth from Arizona to California shore. Majestic and gleaming under the hot sky, it swung southward between wide green borders of willow and cottonwood toward a stark and naked upflung wilderness of mountain peaks, the red ...
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Adam Larey gazed with hard and wondering eyes down the silent current of the red river upon which he meant to drift away into the desert. The Rio Colorado was no river to trust. It chafed at its banks as if to engulf them; muddy and thick it swirled and glided along in flood, sweeping in curves back and forth from Arizona to California shore. Majestic and gleaming under the hot sky, it swung southward between wide green borders of willow and cottonwood toward a stark and naked upflung wilderness of mountain peaks, the red ramparts of the unknown and trackless desert. Adam rushed down the bank and threw his pack into a boat. There his rapid action seemed checked by the same violence that had inspired his haste. He looked back, up at the dusty adobe town of Ehrenberg, asleep now under the glaring noonday heat. It would not wake out of that siesta till the return of the weary gold diggers, or the arrival of the stagecoach or the steamer. A tall Indian, swarthy and unkempt, stood motionless in the shade of a wall, watching stolidly. Adam broke down then. Sobs made his utterance incoherent. "Guerd is no brother-of mine-any more!" he burst out. His accent was one of humiliation and cheated love. "And as for-for her-I'll never-never think of her-again." - Taken from "Wanderer of the Wasteland" written by Zane Grey
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Add this copy of Wanderer of the Wasteland to cart. $40.63, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2021 by Independently published.
Add this copy of Wanderer of the Wasteland to cart. $70.44, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2021 by Independently published.
For those of us who are nearing senior citizen age, there is no greater novelist of the West than Zane Grey. And indeed for the younger set, this book will probably not appeal to them, for it is long, and tedious at times. But the descriptions of the desert and of the times and of the people who Wansfell encounters in his search for self and for redemption over the "killing" of his brother are enough to counter the slowness of the novel. And yes, the book may seem dated in its style and colloquial language the characters use, but that is exactly how Zane Grey heard people speak when he encountered them in his travels in the West. I have been a ZG fan for over 40 years, and purchase every "new" book which is published, including those about the man, and it is easy to see that Wanderer of the Wasteland is autobiographical in nature--his life's story, his struggles, his losses, his journey of self discovery as to what the desert meant to him, and how nature and environment shapes lives. Don't dismiss this novel as "just another romance" by Zane Grey, but embrace it for what it was indended to be Zane Grey's Masterpiece--a story to be taken into one's own heart and used to reflect on one's own life. But even if you don't want to do that, this is still a book one can enjoy simply for the adventure.
