THE LAST DAYS OF ZANE GREY
Non-fiction Allen & Unwin, April 2025 The Last Days of Zane Grey is a biography that tracks the two action-packed trips that the millionaire western writer Zane Grey made to Australia in the 1930s. In need of a new frontier, the Hollywood celebrity came in search of stories, love, money-making deals and the monster-sized fish that reportedly swam in our untouched waters. To his adoring Australian fans he seemed at the height of his powers, but the publicity-savvy Grey was secretly battling to survive in changing times. A scheme was hatched to make the world's first Jaws movie on location at Hayman Island starring Zane Grey as himself, but could Grey catch the villain the filmmakers needed — a terrifying large great white shark?
Complicating both of Grey's trips was a tempestuous affair with the Australian poet Lola Gornall. Local fishing rivals also sought to best Grey wherever he went, from the south coast of New South Wales, to the Great Barrier Reef, to the waters off Port Lincoln in South Australia. As always, Grey was determined to come out on top, to grab for himself more life, more love, more adventures, but one enemy was coming for him that he could not defeat — time. |