The Desert of Wheat

The Desert of Wheat is Zane Grey's wartime novel of the American grain frontier, set amid the vast wheatlands of the Pacific Northwest during the First World War. Blending romance, adventure, melodrama, and patriotic social commentary, it follows farmers whose harvest becomes a matter of national survival, threatened by sabotage, labor unrest, and divided loyalties. Grey's expansive descriptions of landscape, weather, and toil place the book within the Western tradition while extending that tradition from cattle ranges to agricultural empire. Zane Grey, best known for shaping the popular mythology of the American West, brought to this novel his fascination with open spaces, strenuous labor, and moral conflict. Though not primarily a political novelist, Grey was writing in a moment of wartime anxiety, when food production, immigrant identity, and national duty were charged public issues. His own gift for dramatic opposition-wilderness and civilization, courage and treachery, love and sacrifice-made the wheat country a natural arena for his imagination. Readers interested in classic American popular fiction will find The Desert of Wheat both vigorous and revealing. It is recommended for those who want a Western that engages not only frontier romance, but also the cultural pressures of wartime America.

Pagina's: 196, Paperback, Sharp Ink