What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West? Carley Burch laid the letter in her lap and gazed dreamily through the window. It was a day typical of early April in New York, rather cold and gray, with steely sunlight. Spring breathed in the air, but the women passing along Fifty-seventh Street wore furs and wraps. She heard the distant clatter of an L train and then the hum of a motor car. A hurdy-gurdy jarred into the interval of quiet. "Glenn has been gone over a year," she mused, "three months over a ...
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What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West? Carley Burch laid the letter in her lap and gazed dreamily through the window. It was a day typical of early April in New York, rather cold and gray, with steely sunlight. Spring breathed in the air, but the women passing along Fifty-seventh Street wore furs and wraps. She heard the distant clatter of an L train and then the hum of a motor car. A hurdy-gurdy jarred into the interval of quiet. "Glenn has been gone over a year," she mused, "three months over a year-and of all his strange letters this seems the strangest yet." She lived again, for the thousandth time, the last moments she had spent with him. It had been on New-Year's Eve, 1918. They had called upon friends who were staying at the McAlpin, in a suite on the twenty-first floor overlooking Broadway. And when the last quarter hour of that eventful and tragic year began slowly to pass with the low swell of whistles and bells, Carley's friends had discreetly left her alone with her lover, at the open window, to watch and hear the old year out, the new year in. Glenn Kilbourne had returned from France early that fall, shell-shocked and gassed, and otherwise incapacitated for service in the army-a wreck of his former sterling self and in many unaccountable ways a stranger to her. Cold, silent, haunted by something, he had made her miserable with his aloofness. But as the bells began to ring out the year that had been his ruin Glenn had drawn her close, tenderly, passionately, and yet strangely, too. - Taken from "The Call of the Canyon" written by Zane Grey
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Add this copy of The Call of the Canyon to cart. $29.90, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2020 by Independently published.
Add this copy of The Call of the Canyon to cart. $59.47, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2020 by Independently published.
The Call of the Canyon is another of Zane Grey's "war novels" which is to say, it deals with the subject of the mistreatment of returning veterans from the first world war. But it is also the coming of age of a modern "sophisticated" woman who learns the real meaning of love, and what it means to love someone. The story has several scenes which take place in New York City as well as at Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona. For pure romance, this book can not be beat. Carly Birch is one of Zane Grey's finest female characters, and again I will say he often wrote from the woman's point of view which is why the vast majority of his work was published in the leading "women's" magazines of the day, and his readership was more than half women. So, ladies, please don't dismiss Zane Grey as a "western" writer; he was so much more than that.
