BLACK MESA

When this book was published in the mid 1950's, some 15 years after Zane Grey died, it under went considerable editorial changes by Loren Grey to make the book publishable. How much is the original, and how much is Loren's is subject to debate, just as is Valley of Wild Horses which was amended and enlarged by a "ghost" writer to make it long enough, or so the editors at Harpers thought. Black Mesa is a complicated book to follow in the many plots and subplots, but overall if one can keep the time and place of the action in your mind, then this book is a readable one. Paul Manning the main protagonist is a beginning writer, hurt by a woman, has fled to the desert because his friend Wes Kintell tells him it will either kill him or cure him. And once again, nature does what nature does in affecting the characters in this book. Zane Grey grew up in the era of Darwin's theory of evolution--survival of the fittest--a phrase made popular by Zane Grey in his works. Aside from that, this is also a story of the harsh and sad treatment of the Indian by the white man which Zane Grey told fantastically in The Vanishing American. There are characters in this story you will never forget, and situations you thought could only happen in books, yet are real, as Zane Grey traveled to every place he wrote about and gathered information from the "old timers" who were still alive when he visited these places.

A complicated book to follow due to the plots and subplots. But does do the American Indian justice, although not as well as The Vanishing American