The Desert of Wheat

The wheat fields of the Pacific Northwest stretch like a sea of gold under a hard sky, and Kurt Dorn stands at the edge of two wars: the one across the ocean pulling at his patriotism, and the one brewing closer to home, in the form of labor organizers threatening his family's land. His father, a stubborn German immigrant, clings to an older world while the nation demands loyalty. Debt closes in like a drought. The I.W.W. stirs unrest among the workers. And Lenore Anderson, the wealthy rancher's daughter, makes Kurt question everything he thought he wanted. Zane Grey paints the American heartland in 1919 as a battlefield of competing loyalties: to country, to family, to love, and to the land itself. This is a novel about what it means to be American when the old ways are dying and the new world demands you pick a side. The romance crackles against sabotage, suspicion, and a nation learning to see enemies in its own fields.