The Last Trail: A Story of Early Days in the Ohio Valley (Zane Grey's New Western Series)

The Last Trail: A Story of Early Days in the Ohio Valley (Zane Grey's New Western Series)

The Last Trail is the third and final novel in Zane Grey’s Ohio River Valley trilogy. In many ways, this concluding volume of the saga is one of perpetuation. The wilderness along the Ohio has been rapidly disappearing. Forests have been replaced by farms. Woodsmen, hunters, and frontiersmen are becoming farmers. This is true, in fact, for almost everyone except that strange and wonderful character, the border Nemesis, the “mysterious, shadowy, elusive man, whom few pioneers ever saw, but of whom all knew,” Lew Wetzel. Known by the Indians as le vent de la mort (the wind of death), Wetzel and his partner Jonathan Zane are hard on the trail of white rustlers led by Simon Girty and Bing Leggitt. One night at their campfire Helen Sheppard and her father, who have become lost in the forest on their way to Fort Henry, are approached by Wetzel and Zane. For Jonathan Zane and Helen Sheppard this accidental encounter is the beginning of a romance that will be fraught with many dangers. Betty Zane, whose dash for gunpowder in the defense of Fort Henry during the Revolutionary War is now legendary, and her brother, Colonel Ebenezer Zane, are also among the characters in The Last Trail , older now, sharing their wisdom and experiences with a younger generation. The Last Trail was first published in 1909. Two years before, Zane Grey had taken his first journey to the Far West, and it would be in the regions west of the Mississippi that his subsequent Western romances would be set. Yet his frontier trilogy made secure his reputation as a historical novelist. YA--Helen Sheppard and her father left Williamsburg, VA, to start a new life in the Ohio Valley. Her father's friend, Col. Ebenezer Zane, met them at Fort Henry after a terrifying close encounter with Indians that ended peacefully when two bordermen, Jonathan Zane and Lew Wetzel, stepped out of the forest to rescue them. Helen is intrigued by Jonathan Zane and he with her. As the story unfolds, this love affair mingles with the tale of the early days of the Ohio Valley. Indian resentment against the encroaching white men, an obsessive lover, horse rustlers, and plain folks trying to build homesteads out of the wilderness are brought to life by Grey's fine storytelling skills. This is a reprint of the last volume of the author's "Ohio River Trilogy," published in 1909; however, the book stands alone. An interesting foreword written by Grey's son, Loren, tells much about the writer. A good story that would make great historical fiction reading for an American-history assignment. Linda A. Vretos, West Springfield High School, Springfield, VA Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Used Book in Good Condition