Fighting Caravans

by Zane Grey

First published 1929

Amazon

4.1(506)

In the years before the Civil War, a wagon caravan sets out along the Santa Fe Trail, carrying traders and travellers through country where weather, distance, raids and disputes over routes can turn an ordinary journey into a fight for survival. The people travelling together have different motives, but all depend on the caravan holding together when danger appears.

The novel uses the overland trail as its central setting, following the practical problems of moving wagons, livestock and supplies across the plains and Southwest. Encounters with frontier soldiers, traders and other travellers place the fictional journey within the larger movement of commerce and settlement that made Santa Fe one of the principal western routes of the mid-nineteenth century.