The Vanishing American

by Zane Grey

First published 1925

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3.6(310)

In the Navajo reservation country of northeastern Arizona during the early twentieth century, an educated Navajo man is caught between Native community life and the institutions imposed by the surrounding white society. A love that crosses cultural boundaries intensifies that conflict, making questions of identity and belonging immediately personal.

Missionary pressure, federal assimilation policy and the demands of wartime expose the unequal power behind claims of ‘civilising’ Native peoples. The novel reflects the prejudices of its own period while also depicting the destructive consequences of policies that seek to replace language, custom and community authority with outside models of religion and citizenship.