PEARL GREY
Pearl Grey was born on January 31, 1872. He was a talented baseball player, and played for the University of Pennsylvania while getting a degree in dentistry. Pearl was scheduled to follow in his father’s footsteps as a dentist. Looking for excitement, he played some semi-pro baseball. But that didn’t satisfy his need.
Incidentally, Pearl never liked his first name, which was thought by everyone to be a woman’s name. So he decided to change it to his mother’s maiden name, Zane.
Pearl, or as we know him now, Zane Grey never wanted to be a dentist. He wanted to be a writer. His first novel was a forgettable one about one of his ancestors. But his life was changed when in 1908 he met Colonel C. J. “Buffalo” Jones. Buffalo Jones convinced Zane to write his biography. So Zane could get a feel of the atmosphere of Buffalo Jones’ life, Jones took the 36-year-old writer out west.
While out west, Zane Grey experienced the excitement of the west, like roping mountain lions. Grey was fascinated with the people and landscape. The biography of Jones, “The Last of the Plainsmen” was completed that same year.
Although it got little attention, Zane Grey had found his calling.
About four years later Zane Grey published a novel that gained him lasting fame…Riders of the Purple Sage. This novel was about a weak easterner who became a man because of his exposure to the culture of the West. It was a theme that Zane would repeat in the almost 80 books he published during a life that lasted 64 years.
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