Forlorn River

by Zane Grey Book 1 in the Forlorn River series.

First published 1927

Amazon

4.2(543)

Ben Ide rejects the settled future his father expects and commits himself to the dangerous work of hunting wild horses in the California-Oregon border country around the turn of the twentieth century. The range offers freedom, but it also exposes divisions within his family and tests friendships formed in a life built around horses, distance and risk.

The novel follows Ben through a landscape where the older open-range West is beginning to contract. Ranching, settlement and changing expectations press against the independence he values, while his pursuit of wild horses becomes bound up with questions of loyalty, maturity and the kind of life he is willing to build.