Zane Grey's Horse Heaven Hill is my second book for this year's June on the Range reading event and my first ever book by Grey, renowned dentist(!) and author of over 100 novels!
Coming in at just a little over 180 pages, this relatively short novel stands firmly on the western/romance side of the equation with only a couple shots fired and not a single human casualty, though there are some shockingly grotesque deaths of several wild horses near the end of the text. Yuck!
The story follows young Lark Burrell, a teenage transplant from Idaho who moves to the neighboring state of Washington to live with her uncle and his family including Lark's beautiful and adoring cousin, Marigold Wade.
From the get-go, we learn that Lark, though quite able to take care of herself, is rather naive when it comes to the ways of the world. She's an expert rider, she can shoot, and she knows her way around the fields. She's also extremely fond of horses, and when she learns of a local practice whereby certain depraved individuals have been stampeding massive numbers of wild horses and selling them off for chicken feed (seriously), she loses it.
Throughout all this, she also finds herself smitten with her cousin's fiance, Stanley Weston, a well-to-do and well-educated man, and for most of the book, the two of them opt to not follow through on their feelings for one another until Marigold decides to end her engagement with Stanley, freeing him for Lark's affections.
The latter part of the novel deals with the witnessing one of those aforementioned wild horse drives that concludes with Lark sabotaging and destroying the corral which frees the captured horses.
An almost deadly showdown between Hurd Blanding, the mastermind behind this barbaric practice, and Stan is thwarted by Lark's shooting skills as she blasts a hole in Blanding's shoulder and he quickly retreats with his allies leaving Lark and Stanley to marry and return to Lark's homestead in Idaho.
Overall, it was well written and a decent western/romance novel, but not really my kind of thing. I would give it three sheriff badges out of five. ★★★
The edition I read, chosen randomly from the packed shelves at the Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, CA, was published by Pocket Books, Inc. (October 1964).
Up next, it's West of the Law from one of my new favorite western authors, Al Cody (Archie Lynn Joscelyn). Assuming I get through that one quickly, I have a stack of other possibilities taunting me from the shelves including Showdown at Sunset by Harry Sinclair Drago, the novelization of the film, the King and Four Queens written by renowned science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, and the Whistler, a collection of three stories by E.B. Mann.
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