Zane Grey, one of the great storytellers of the American west, was born in 1872 in the town of
Zanesville--a village founded by his ancestors. His kin had been industrious pioneers in America’s "First West", the historic Ohio Valley, and his boyhood thrill at their adventures would eventually motivate Grey to novelize both his family’s own story as well as the stories of many other pioneer personalities--the sturdy homesteader, the farm wife doing double duty between chores and children, the rancher and cowhand riding herd over stubborn beef cattle, the desperado seemingly forever on the run and the poor, wayfaring stranger struggling to get a toehold in his new environs, to name just a few.
Grey actually started his young career on a baseball scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania while studying dentistry on his father's insistence. But writing was in his blood so he taught himself to write and, after a few lean years, had his first breakthrough novel in Heritage of the Desert in 1910.
