To the Last Man

Rating:
Summary: Based on a true blood feud, you can see where it happened
Review: Of all of Zane Grey's books, this one rates in my personal top three favorites. The story itself is outstanding. Lots of suspense and gunplay, with a hopeless romance injected to keep your mind engaged. This story is especially good as it is loosely based on an true blood feud which happened in Pleasant Valley, a town in the Tonto Basin area of Arizona. Therefore, you can visit the site, see where Zane set his novel, and know that while Grey's may have been a fictional account, a feud DID happen, right where you are standing. The town is now called Young, by the way, to get rid of the stigma associated with the Pleasant Valley War. During a cross country trip, I took the time to drive out to Young just so I could see for myself where it all happened. I recommend every Zan Grey fan take the time to do so. I also read the account of the actual feud (available at the Tonto Basin Historical Center), and several key elements in Grey's novel are true. There was only one active participant who survived the feud, and the bit about the battle pausing so the ladies could bury their dead husbands to keep hogs from eating the corpses actually happened.