Union Pacific, Zane Grey
Union Pacific, Zane Grey
2 Rating(s)
List: $14.99 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.49

Union Pacific
A Western Story

Author: Zane Grey

Narrator: Eric G. Dove

Unabridged: 12 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 08/22/2017


Synopsis

From one of the most beloved Western authors comes an epic historical tale of adventure and romance in the great wilderness.

Against the epic backdrop of the building of the Union Pacific Railroad across plains and deserts and through the mountains to meet up with the Southern Pacific in Utah comes a sprawling, historical tale. Warren Neale is a brilliant civil engineer who is constantly confronted with construction problems. He is sided by Larry Red King, a Texas gunfighter and friend. Allie Lee, who is heading east from California on a wagon train, is the sole survivor of an Indian raid in the Black Hills. Neale and a small company of US cavalry find Allie hidden at the scene and nearly out of her mind in terror. Al Slingerland, a trapper and buffalo hunter, has a cabin in a nearby valley, and Allie is taken there to recover.

Benton is the wild town set up overnight to service the vices of the multitude of railroad workers. The only law is that which the soldiers impose, but their concern is not really in enforcing law in Benton, but in protecting the men laying the tracks and the supply trains. In addition to the natural obstacles that impede the building of the Union Pacific, workers must contend with the equally great weight of constant graft and corruption, against which Larry Red King’s guns can afford no protection.

In this magnificent panorama of constant danger and adventure, the many lives involved, including ruthless gamblers and women of the evening, and the slow but monumental progress of the laying of the track through the wilderness, Zane Grey vividly brings to life a lost time and society in a grand novel, now published as he had first written it.

Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns—books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians—are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

About Zane Grey

The prolific American writer Zane Grey was the pioneer of the Western literary genre. Grey produced well over 100 books, in which he presented the West as a moral battleground, where his characters were either destroyed or redeemed. His semi-outlaw heroes were his most enduring creation. He sold some 17 million books during his lifetime, and an estimated 100 Hollywood Western films have been based on his stories.

Born with the name Pearl Grey in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1872, Zane was the son of a farmer and part-time preacher. His mother was a second-generation Danish Quaker. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in dentistry in 1896 and practiced in New York City until 1904. That year, Grey wrote and self-published his first book, Betty Zane, after it was turned down by several publishers. The colorful frontier story was based on his mother's journal and eventually became a critical success. He married Lina Elise Roth, who encouraged him to become a full-time professional writer.

In 1908, Grey made a journey to the West with Colonel C. J. "Buffalo" Jones, who told him tales of adventure on the plains. This trip turned out to be a turning point in Grey's career. In 1912, Riders of the Purple Sage was published. It sold 2 million copies and was filmed three times. Grey's formula-in which a mysterious outlaw fights to protect the innocent and the good-shows up in many of his novels. In 1918, he moved to Altadena, California, where he lived for the rest of his life. Grey died on October 23, 1939.


Reviews

Western novels have always been like comfort food to me. Familiar and satisfying. Grey’s epic makes the grade in both respects. It is familiar in that it is the standard morality play and follows a predictable plot. The hero prevails and weds the heroine after many travails. Satisfying in that the s......more

Goodreads review by Richard

Didn't read the version shown here though. I'm reading a paperback edition that was taken from Zane Grey's own manuscript, not the version that was mostly re-written by his editor which apparently is the most prevalent one in print today. This is my favorite Zane Grey book that I've read so far, may......more

Goodreads review by Mary

Can't believe I'd never picked up a Zane Grey western before. But there it was, the large print copy sitting on the "new books" shelf at my library. After checking it out, I showed Larry, "look, I found a railroad buildin' book" He said, "I think I read that in high school"(re: 1958). So I looked at......more

Goodreads review by Lloyd

This is an epic western that incorporates the building of the transcontinental railroad into a tale of the old west and of an unrequited love. The main character is Warren Neale, who is an engineer who works for the Union Pacific Railroad. Warren lays out the path the train will cut through the plai......more