The Code of the West

by Zane Grey

First published 1934

Amazon

3.9(660)

In Arizona’s Tonto Basin during the 1920s, a reserved rancher and a spirited woman from the East are drawn together despite sharply different assumptions about courtship, independence and responsibility. What appears to one of them to be straightforward conduct can look controlling or incomprehensible to the other.

Their conflict reflects a wider collision between an older ranching culture and the social expectations of a more modern America. The remote community still depends on customary ideas of honour and obligation, but outside attitudes are increasingly difficult to exclude. Romance develops through that cultural friction rather than apart from it.