Wilderness Trek Book

I discovered Zane Grey in 1979. I was a freshman in college, and I decided to enter a contest for the "best first western novel." Although I'd watched a lot of Bonanza and the Big Valley, I'd never read a western. I got my hands on some Zane Grey to read before I started to write.

I discovered that I love Zane Grey. His book are full of romance, passion, friendship, and adventure. They sweep you into the era of the cowboy and the American west. Grey had a great love of nature, and his desriptions of the natural world around his characters capture nature in all its starkness and beauty.

Wilderness Trek is one of the best examples of his work. I first read it in 1979 and recently picked it up to read again. Two American cowboys flee the US when one confesses to a crime he did not commit so the woman he loves can be with the man she loves. The cowboys arrive in Australia and join a great cattle drive across the Australian Outback that will take two years. Along the way there is adventure, friendship, cattle stampedes, fierce weather, tedium, treachory, rustling, murder, and love. Wilderness Trek is a great read.

(Oh, and I did finish that first western. It's pretty terrible, but I set out to write a western and I did it!)