The U.P. Trail

Written by Zane Grey

Narrated by Jack Sondericker

A survey engineer finds a young woman who has survived a Sioux battle. The story follows the progression of the railway line through Wyoming in outstanding Zane Grey fashion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books in Motion
• Release date: Mar 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781605488516

Zane Grey

Zane Grey (1872–1939) was an American writer best known for western literature. Born and raised in Ohio, Grey was one of five children from an English Quaker family. As a youth, he developed an interest in sports, history and eventually writing. He attended University of Pennsylvania where he studied dentistry, while balancing his creative endeavors. One of his first published pieces was the article “A Day on the Delaware" (1902), followed by the novels Betty Zane (1903) and The Spirit of the Border (1906). His career spanned several decades and was often inspired by real-life settings and events.

Reviews for The U.P. Trail

[Steven Sforza · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Recording quality on the audio book is just unbearibly awful.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey is a story set in the American West as a military party of soldiers and engineers who are tasked to do the original survey work for the Union Pacific railroad. The story opens as the surveying team comes up against the Laramie Mountains, a place of high peaks and deep gorges. This terrain slows the party down as they seek to find the best way to get through. Of course this is just a prelude to what lies ahead, the Rocky Mountains.The Sioux Indians have taken to the warpath, and have attacked a near-by wagon train, but the soldiers were too late to save the party but one young woman survived and is rescued. Allie is taken in by an old mountain man and with his care and teaching she changes from the somber, pale victim into an independent, strong young woman. A romance develops between this traumatized young woman, Allie, and one of the young engineers, Warren Neal. The story winds through many adventures, some dealing with the railroad and others with Allie being kidnapped by desperadoes and eventually falling into the hands of the Indians. As Warren, his gunslinger friend, Red, and the mountain man, Slingerland search for answers as to what happened to Allie, the story becomes a series of close encounters and rather contrived coincidences. Zane Grey writes with a lot of emotion which can make his stories seem very melodramatic but where his writing shines is in his descriptions of the American West. I was pleased with how Grey developed his female character from a helpless victim into a person who dealt with her own situation and didn’t need to be rescued by the men. Overall, I did enjoy The U. P. Trail as he delivered a lively adventure story along with a little history about the building of the railway that was to eventually span the continent.

[jpsnow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Grey is always better when he writes historical fiction based on real events. This is one of his best stories because of his emphasis on the various nationalities of men who completed this dream. The story ends at Promitory Peak with the driving of the silver spike.