Western Union

by Zane Grey

First published 1939

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3.7(286)

In 1861, Wayne Cameron leaves New England after unsuccessful attempts to settle into law and medicine. Drawn instead by the scale of the Western Union project, he travels to Omaha and joins the crews racing to complete a transcontinental telegraph line across the plains.

Construction exposes Wayne to prairie fire, buffalo herds, conflict between settlers and ranchers, and the isolation of work far beyond established towns. His growing attachment to Kit Sunderland gives him a personal stake in the country he had first approached as an adventure. The novel uses the telegraph line to show a West being physically connected to the eastern states even as older frontier conditions persist around it.