The Day of the Beast

by Zane Grey

First published 1922

Amazon EPUB Project Gutenberg

3.5(248)

Daren Lane returns from military service in World War I physically wounded and profoundly changed by what he has experienced. Back in his American hometown, he finds that civilian life has moved on without him and that the values for which he believed he fought seem increasingly remote from the restless, pleasure-seeking society around him.

Rather than a conventional Western, the novel is a postwar social drama about veterans, disability, alienation and rapid cultural change. Lane’s difficulty in rebuilding relationships with family, friends and former companions gives the story its central tension, placing the personal aftermath of war against the unsettled transition into the 1920s.