Desert Heritage: A Western Story

Zane Grey

Apr 2013 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

awesome!

About the author

Zane Grey was born Pearl Zane Gray in 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. He studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania, married Lina Elise Roth in 1905, then moved his family west where he began to write novels. The author of 86 books, he is today considered the father of the Western genre, with its heady romances and mysterious outlaws. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) brought Grey his greatest popular acclaim. Other notable titles include The Light of Western Stars (1914) and The Vanishing American (1925). An extremely prolific writer, he often completed three novels a year, while his publisher would issue only one at a time. Twenty-five of his novels were published posthumously. His last, The Reef Girl, was published in 1977. Zane Grey died of heart failure on October 23 in Altadena, California, in 1939.