Zane Grey was one of America's most prolific writers of the early 20th century -- he was also my father's favorite author. My father had almost all of his novels and liked to read and reread them. I read a few of them when I was younger and remember enjoying them. I decided to read Boulder Dam because our family visited the dam as part of a Vegas vacation this summer. Hoover (Boulder) Dam was so impressive and it amazes me how it could have been constructed in the 1930s during the height of the Depression. Grey's novel was actually published 1963 - more than 20 years after his death in 1939. I'm not sure when it was written but reading it is definitely going back to a by-gone era. The book had some great descriptions of how Boulder Dam was built but the plot and storyline was something out of the past. It includes a plot by Communists to destroy the dam and also includes characters such as Chicago racketeers who traffick in white slavery. The hero of the story, Lynn Weston, is a typical Grey do-gooder who can do no wrong. He saves the dam and ends up with the girl in peril. The writing is very descriptive and often goes on and on. It also includes some racial slurs that were common in books of the period but expletives are deleted with blanks _______! Anyway, this was a definite change of pace.

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