Pearl Zane Gray studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, and later played with a minor league team. He met and later married Lina Roth, whose inheritance helped support his efforts to become a writer. He pioneered the Western genre: his first western, Heritage of the Desert, became a bestseller in 1910, and he went on to write over sixty books, many of which became films. The Spirit of the Border is based on the journal of Col. Ebenezer Zane, a prominent hunter-pioneer. The novel chronicles life on the frontier in the early days of settlement. Grey said "the author does not intend to apologize for what many readers may call the 'brutality' of the story; but rather to explain that its wild spirit is true to the life of the Western border as it was known only a little more than one hundred years ago."

Author Biography

Pearl Zane Grey (1872 - October 23, 1939) was an American dentist and author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American frontier. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his best-selling book. In addition to the commercial success of his printed works, they had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and television productions. His novels and short stories have been adapted into 112 films, two television episodes and a television series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. Pearl Zane Gray studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship and later played with a minor league team. He met and later married Lina Roth, whose inheritance helped support his efforts to become a writer. He pioneered the Western genre: his first western, Heritage of the Desert, became a bestseller in 1910 and he went on to write over sixty books, many of which became films.