The Call of the Canyon

The Call of the Canyon is a western written by Zane Grey in 1924.

Set in the American West of the 1920s, Gleen Kilbourne is a military veteran of the United States Army. He returns from Europe from fighting in the First World War.

He arrives shocked by the events he experienced there and physically incapacitated. The fighting in France has made him very sick and he needs to get his health back, so he goes west to Arizona.

His fiancée, Carley Bruch, meanwhile lives with her family in New York. She receives communication through letters from Gleen but little by little these letters become more and more strange. The young woman worries about him and decides to go visit him.

There, she stays at a local hostel and meets a series of local characters.

Gleen, now recovered, has become a pig farmer and recognizes that he will not be able to return to the old urban and superficial life. However, Carley cannot accept that kind of life and she considers breaking off the engagement and returning to New York...

"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".