Zane Grey

Awaited as the most anticipated biography to come along in years, the life story of Zane Grey as told by master pulp writer Frank Gruber caused critics to either praise it or pan it. Given unlimited access to all of the diaries and kept correspondence over the years--the letters between Zane and Dolly Grey--and with full co-operation of the family many in the publishing industry believed more should have been told about Zane Grey's private life. But the family wanted that kept private, believing such information might harm Grey's standing with the public and hurt sales; this had been the fear for many, many years even before he had died in 1939. And in light of what has surfaced since then, with the permission of the surviving children, who have all since died, knowledge of Grey's affairs have not hindered his status, but have actually increased the interest in him and in his philosophy of life, and have helped explain why he wrote what he wrote to some degree. Zane Grey was a man of paradoxical interests and temperament. He was a staunch environmentalist and protector of the land and the national parks, yet his work encouraged more and more people to go see these areas, thereby causing stresses to the land. He wrote against the age of the flapper and the loose morals of the 1920's, yet he himself was quite the lady's man. This biography does Zane Grey justice, and for anyone wanting to know more about the man, his life as a teenager playing baseball in Ohio during the 1880's, his college years at Penn, his struggles to get published, his trouble with the Harper brass, his fights with the IRS, and his last years, Frank Gruber's treatise is well worth owning. I highly recommend it.