The Thundering Herd

by Zane Grey

First published 1925

Amazon

3.9(559)

In the Texas Panhandle in 1874, buffalo hunters enter the southern plains during the commercial destruction of the great bison herds. For the hunters the animals represent hides, meat and wages; for Plains peoples the same slaughter threatens a resource at the centre of food, mobility, trade and cultural life.

The novel follows people drawn into this violent economy while the landscape itself is being transformed at extraordinary speed. Hunting camps, traders and armed encounters make survival uncertain, but the larger tragedy is cumulative: each successful hunt contributes to the disappearance of the herds on which an entire way of life depends.