The Desert of Wheat [Mass Market Paperback]

Zane Grey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2001

Zane Grey is one of America's most popular and enduring authors, the man behind the classic Western Riders of the Purple Sage.

Desert of Wheat is a thrilling and romantic tale of sabotage in the wheat fields of the Pacific Northwest during World War I. A passionate novel of patriotic and anti-union propaganda, it portrays the anxieties of the young country threatened by a foreign war after the closing of the frontier. Grey captures the heart of a nation at the brink of a century of change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Readable and engrossing."--The New York Times

About the Author

American author and the originator of Western novels. Grey was a prolific writer and wrote more than 80 books which sold over 13,000,000 copies in his lifetime. His first novel, Betty Zane, was published in 1904. His thrilling tales of the American West are notable for their sense of adventure and drama. The most popular of these are Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), The Lone Star Ranger (1915), Call of the Canyon (1924), and Code of the West (1934). Grey also wrote some non-fictional books, of which Tales of Fishing (1925) was the most successful. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (October 14, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812578619
• ISBN-13: 978-0812578614
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,360,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic Western tale, July 11, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Desert of Wheat: Library Edition (Audio Cassette)

Zane Grey's The Desert Of Wheat is the powerful story of Kurt Dorn, a young farmer facing a moral dilemma between going to France to fight the Germans or staying in America to protect the woman he loves and his wheat crop grown with the sweat of hard labor. A classic Western tale, epitomizing Zane Grey's undeniable ability to capture the soul of life, love, and land, and vividly narrated by Jim Gough, The Desert Of Wheat is a superbly produced, complete and unabridged audiobook presentation and highly recommended for community library audiobook collections and the legions of dedicated Zane Grey fans.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting view of America during World War I, April 1, 2006

By 

A. Woman (Greeneville, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Desert of Wheat (Mass Market Paperback)

Hero Kurt Dorn is the son of a German immigrant, which puts father and son at odds during the war. Most of the book is taken up with Dorn's fight against the I.W.W., a socialist labor force that's backed by German money. (A double whammy as the two things America hated most at this time was Germany AND socialists!) It's not until the last third or so of the book that Kurt goes off to war. Author Zane Grey, through his fictional character, is able to go off on a tangent about American women going ga-ga over a uniform and throwing themselves at men. (Like that's never happened before.) Once in the trenches of France, Dorn - who had been so anxious to go kill Germans - suddenly realizes the evils of war and the wrongness of wholesale slaughter. Not that that stops him from killing a few Germans anyway.

Count how many times the word "wheat" is used in this book.