Perhaps more than any other modern American novelist, Zane Grey caught the imaginations of several generations of readers. From 1910 until 1925, his books appeared regularly on best-seller lists, and even today, in both hardcover and paperback, his fiction remains popular. His novels have been translated into so many languages and published in so many editions that exact sales figures are virtually impossible to ascertain, although estimates suggest that well over 130 million copies of his books have been sold during the past seventy-five years. Most critics, however, have responded unfavorably to Grey's writing. They point to his verbose descriptions, his convoluted plots, his predictable characters, and his excessive romanticism, relegating him to a position of significance chiefly as a phenomenon of popular culture.

Born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1872, Pearl Zane Grey's boyhood was spent fishing and playing baseball, reading classics and dime novels with equal pleasure, and scribbling his own...