The U. P. Trail
by Zane Grey
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Although Western writer Zane Grey is best remembered for The Riders of the Purple Sage, the novel The U.P. Trail is a favorite among critics and fans alike. This ambitious tale weaves a grand narrative of the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad line, which serves as the backdrop for a tender romance that blooms between the virtuous Allie and the mysterious and taciturn protagonist, Warren Neale..
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The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey is a story set in the American West as a military party of soldiers and engineers who are tasked to do the original survey work for the Union Pacific railroad. The story opens as the surveying team comes up against the Laramie Mountains, a place of high peaks and deep gorges. This terrain slows the party down as they seek to find the best way to get through. Of course this is just a prelude to what lies ahead, the Rocky Mountains.
The Sioux Indians have taken to the warpath, and have attacked a near-by wagon train, but the soldiers were too late to save the party but one young woman survived and is rescued. Allie is taken in by an old mountain man and with his care and teaching she changes from the somber, show more pale victim into an independent, strong young woman. A romance develops between this traumatized young woman, Allie, and one of the young engineers, Warren Neal. The story winds through many adventures, some dealing with the railroad and others with Allie being kidnapped by desperadoes and eventually falling into the hands of the Indians. As Warren, his gunslinger friend, Red, and the mountain man, Slingerland search for answers as to what happened to Allie, the story becomes a series of close encounters and rather contrived coincidences.
Zane Grey writes with a lot of emotion which can make his stories seem very melodramatic but where his writing shines is in his descriptions of the American West. I was pleased with how Grey developed his female character from a helpless victim into a person who dealt with her own situation and didn’t need to be rescued by the men. Overall, I did enjoy The U. P. Trail as he delivered a lively adventure story along with a little history about the building of the railway that was to eventually span the continent. show less
The Sioux Indians have taken to the warpath, and have attacked a near-by wagon train, but the soldiers were too late to save the party but one young woman survived and is rescued. Allie is taken in by an old mountain man and with his care and teaching she changes from the somber, show more pale victim into an independent, strong young woman. A romance develops between this traumatized young woman, Allie, and one of the young engineers, Warren Neal. The story winds through many adventures, some dealing with the railroad and others with Allie being kidnapped by desperadoes and eventually falling into the hands of the Indians. As Warren, his gunslinger friend, Red, and the mountain man, Slingerland search for answers as to what happened to Allie, the story becomes a series of close encounters and rather contrived coincidences.
Zane Grey writes with a lot of emotion which can make his stories seem very melodramatic but where his writing shines is in his descriptions of the American West. I was pleased with how Grey developed his female character from a helpless victim into a person who dealt with her own situation and didn’t need to be rescued by the men. Overall, I did enjoy The U. P. Trail as he delivered a lively adventure story along with a little history about the building of the railway that was to eventually span the continent. show less
Grey is always better when he writes historical fiction based on real events. This is one of his best stories because of his emphasis on the various nationalities of men who completed this dream. The story ends at Promitory Peak with the driving of the silver spike.
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Publisher's Weekly Bestsellers Part I - 1895-1939
399 works; 8 members
Author Information
437+ Works 20,838 Members
Zane Grey was born Pearl Zane Gray in 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. He studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania, married Lina Elise Roth in 1905, then moved his family west where he began to write novels. The author of 86 books, he is today considered the father of the Western genre, with its heady romances and mysterious outlaws. Riders show more of the Purple Sage (1912) brought Grey his greatest popular acclaim. Other notable titles include The Light of Western Stars (1914) and The Vanishing American (1925). An extremely prolific writer, he often completed three novels a year, while his publisher would issue only one at a time. Twenty-five of his novels were published posthumously. His last, The Reef Girl, was published in 1977. Zane Grey died of heart failure on October 23 in Altadena, California, in 1939. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Original title
- The U. P. Trail
- Original publication date
- 1918
- Important places
- Wyoming, USA
- First words
- In the early sixties a trail led from the broad Missouri, swirling yellow and turgid between its green-groved borders, for miles and miles out upon the grassy Nebraska plains, turning westward over the undulating prairie, wit... (show all)h its swales and billows and long, winding lines of cottonwoods, to a slow, vast heave of rising ground—Wyoming—where the herds of buffalo grazed and the wolf was lord and the camp-fire of the trapper sent up its curling blue smoke from beside some lonely stream; on and on over the barren lands of eternal monotony, all so gray and wide and solemn and silent under the endless sky; on, ever on, up to the bleak, black hills and into the waterless gullies and through the rocky gorges where the deer browsed and the savage lurked; then slowly rising to the pass between the great bold peaks, and across the windy uplands into Utah, with its verdant valleys, green as emeralds, and its haze-filled cañons and wonderful wind-worn cliffs and walls, and its pale salt lakes, veiled in the shadows of stark and lofty rocks, dim, lilac-colored, austere, and isolated; ever onward across Nevada, and ever westward, up from desert to mountain, up into California, where the white streams rushed and roared and the stately pines towered, and seen from craggy heights, deep down, the little blue lakes gleamed like gems; finally sloping to the great descent, where the mountain world ceased and where, out beyond the golden land, asleep and peaceful, stretched the illimitable Pacific, vague and grand beneath the setting sun.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The old chief swept aloft his arm, and then in his acceptance of the inevitable bitterness he stood in magnificent austerity, somber as death, seeing in this railroad train creeping, fading into the ruddy sunset, a symbol of the destiny of the Indian—vanishing—vanishing—vanishing—
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 813.52 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1900-1945
- LCC
- PZ3 .G87 — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction in English
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 261
- Popularity
- 123,690
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.26)
- Languages
- English, Finnish, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 101
- ASINs
- 36
