Zane Grey is the master writer of the American Western. The Valley of Wild Horses is a great story full of cowboys, horses, hombres and gun fights. Panhandle Smith, "Pan" for short, was born to a Texas farmer and raised in wide open spaces. His dad bought him his first pony when he was just a spud, and when the cattle herds came by going up the trail, he was in awe of the cowboys, their horses, boots and spurs. The story follows Pan, his family, friends and girl in the wild west. Lawless but full of opportunity. ...( Fred ...
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Zane Grey is the master writer of the American Western. The Valley of Wild Horses is a great story full of cowboys, horses, hombres and gun fights. Panhandle Smith, "Pan" for short, was born to a Texas farmer and raised in wide open spaces. His dad bought him his first pony when he was just a spud, and when the cattle herds came by going up the trail, he was in awe of the cowboys, their horses, boots and spurs. The story follows Pan, his family, friends and girl in the wild west. Lawless but full of opportunity. ...( Fred Shaw) About the author: Zane Grey, original name Pearl Grey, (born Jan. 31, 1872, Zanesville, Ohio, U.S.-died Oct. 23, 1939, Altadena, Calif.), prolific writer whose romantic novels of the American West largely created a new literary genre, the western. Trained as a dentist, Grey practiced in New York City from 1898 to 1904, when he published privately a novel of pioneer life, Betty Zane, based on an ancestor's journal. Deciding to abandon dentistry for full-time writing, he published in 1905 The Spirit of the Border-also based on Zane's notes-which became a best-seller. Grey subsequently wrote more than 80 books, a number of which were published posthumously; more than 50 were in print in the last quarter of the 20th century. The novel Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was the most popular; others included The Lone Star Ranger (1915), The U.P. Trail (1918), Call of the Canyon (1924), and Code of the West (1934). Prominent among his nonfiction works is Tales of Fishing (1925). (britannica.com) The more books Grey sold, the more the established critics, such as Heywood Broun and Burton Rascoe, attacked him. They claimed his depictions of the West were too fanciful, too violent, and not faithful to the moral realities of the frontier. They thought his characters unrealistic and much larger-than-life. Broun stated that "the substance of any two Zane Grey books could be written upon the back of a postage stamp." T. K. Whipple praised a typical Grey novel as a modern version of the ancient Beowulf saga, a battle of passions with one another and with the will, a struggle of love and hate, or remorse and revenge, of blood, lust, honor, friendship, anger, grief-all of a grand scale and all incalculable and mysterious." But he also criticized Grey's writing, "His style, for example, has the stiffness which comes from an imperfect mastery of the medium. It lacks fluency and facility. Grey based his work in his own varied first-hand experience, supported by careful note-taking, and considerable research. Despite his great popular success and fortune, Grey read the reviews and sometimes became paralyzed by negative emotions after critical ones. (wikipedia.org)
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
The revised book "Open Range" published by Five Star Westerns in 2002 is far superior to this book which had additions written by a ghost writer and originally published in the late 1940's just because the editors at Harpers didn't feel the book was long enough--pure balderdash. The lead character, Panhandle Smith, has his life told from birth, and his nomadic lifestyle readies him for whatever is thrown in his way; and this is in essence the plot of this book. And he finds his "eldorado" in a rim-rock lined canyon filled with thousands of wild horses, worth a fortune if he can capture and sell them. Of course, one man stands in his way of capturing the horses and between him and the girl. It wouldn't be Zane Grey without the course of romance which never ran smoothly. Despite the ghost written additions I would still encourage you to buy this book, although Open Range is so much better it is almost impossible to express how much better. But this version will suffice if you can't acquire the other.
