Publishers Weekly
04/17/2023
Journalist Grant debuts with a thoughtful and entertaining account of his five-month trip along the length of the 19th-century overland mail route from St. Joseph, Mo., to Sacramento, Calif. Launched in 1860, the Pony Express consisted of a series of way stations spread across 2,000 miles and spaced 10 to 20 miles apart, between which horseback riders carried mail in a relay system. Retracing this route with two horses, Badger and Chicken Fry, Grant evocatively describes the Great Plains of Nebraska, the sagebrush steppe of Wyoming, the Great Basin of Utah, and other geographic landmarks, and reflects on the damage “inflicted” on the western landscape by “modernization.” He takes note of family farms abandoned in the face of industrial agriculture’s ascendancy and Las Vegas’s campaign to purchase “all the water in northern Arizona,” but also finds rewarding connections with farmers, cattlemen, amateur historians, migrant sheep herders, and others he meets along the trail. “The pioneer spirit of the West runs close to the surface of the modern landscape,” he writes. Enriched by Grant’s deep knowledge of the West, matter-of-fact prose, and colorful character sketches, this is a rewarding ride. (July)
From the Publisher
"Will Grant, a horse trainer, veteran cowboy and writer for Outside magazine, shows himself to be a gifted storyteller and reporter. His affection for the landscape and the creatures that inhabit it is sincere and oftentimes tender. Grant brings readers so close to the scene that they may feel the light breeze blowing through the holes in the soles of his boots.”—New York Times
“The Last Ride of the PonyExpress by Will Grant is a spellbinding account of the author’s solo 2,000 mile horseback journey retracing the route of the old Pony Express. Beautifully and vividly written, it weaves adventure and hardship with history and a deep appreciation for the land and its people. Many books have been written about the Pony Express by people who immersed themselves libraries and archives, but this book does the opposite, taking the reader into the vastness of our landscape on an unforgettable journey across the American West. Anyone interested in western history, horses, and adventure travel will love this book! Highly, highly recommended.” —Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Cities of Gold and The Lost City of the Monkey God
“The Last Ride of the Pony Express is immersive, moving, and beautifully rendered. It’s so much more than an adventure on horseback. It’s, at heart, a love letter: to the landscape, and to the people who inhabit it. An absorbing tale of the American West, and a remarkable debut.” —Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of The Fisherman and the Dragon and The Feather Thief
"In The Last Ride of the Pony Express, Will Grant has braided one of the finest tales in the storied history of the American West, a grand adventure in which the hoofbeats laid down by a writer whose prose is as controlled, as rhythmic, and as beautiful as his horsemanship come together to form a hymn to the land itself. A gorgeous and compelling ride."—Kevin Fedarko, author of the New York Times bestselling The Emerald Mile
“Will Grant takes readers on a rollicking ride across the most famous horse trail in America in The Last Ride of the Pony Express. Navigating present-day highways and byways as well as history, the author and his steeds travel through a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope, introducing us to two-thousand-miles’ worth of colorful characters, both dead and very much alive. Like Grant, we may know more or less where he’s headed, but the fun is all in getting there. A unique and enjoyable read about today’s America and its storied past. Highly recommended, whatever you know or think you know about the West, old or otherwise.”—Jim DeFelice, co-author of the New York Times bestselling American Sniper
“The Pony Express is something every American school-child learns about, but which we rarely see portrayed in its full, sweaty, bloody reality. By embarking on this adventure, Grant blows the dust right off this chapter in history and leaves it fresh. But I was delighted to discover that this book is as much about the present as it is about the past. The West that Grant shows us from “between the ears of a horse” is resilient and precarious, highly mechanized and still surprisingly wild. It's a journey well worth taking.”—Robert Moor, bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration
“The Pony Express was in existence for less than two years, yet what a terrific pull it's had on our national imagination. Will Grant, a horseman through and through, is just the right writer to capture its soul. In prose that’s appropriately lean and raw, he's written a seamless and unforgettable blend of history and horses that pays homage to those brave, Mercury-like messengers of yore.”—Hampton Sides, NYT bestselling author of Blood and Thunder
“The Last Ride of the Pony Express is exactly my favorite kind of book, a travel story, chock full of history with a genial and completely fascinating tour guide. Will Grant writes about horses with a special insight, compassion and good humor that let me know I was on a ride with a real horseman. I loved riding across the West with Grant and his two horses, as he introduced me to people and places most of us will never visit, with verve, adventure, and unfailing good nature that shows us the best of America’s less travelled by-ways.”—Elizabeth Letts #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Ride of Her Life
“reads like a labor of love, one of those first books whose purity and sense of wonder you feel with every page…The Last Ride of the Pony Express is a paean to the horse and the American West, both of which Grant writes about with beauty and precision and a spareness as dry and sharp as a Nevada summer afternoon….y the time he and Badger and Chicken Fry clip-clop into Sacramento you grasp the improbability of the Pony Express — which carried some 39,500 pieces of mail in its year and a half of operation — and the place all those horses and men tried to bridge. And by the time Grant makes it home to New Mexico, having worn through one pair of boots and 12 pairs of socks, but not, pointedly, his mounts, I knew why horses are counted in head, not heads, and I could smell the sagebrush and hear the wind long after I stopped reading."—The Washington Post
Library Journal
06/01/2023
In its 18 months of existence, the Pony Express employed around 80 riders to cover roughly 2,000 miles in 10 days to deliver mail. To ensure that the riders could make the journey, the company set up 190 stations, mostly in Utah, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Nevada, where riders could get water and a fresh mount. Journalist and horseman Grant sets out to ride the Pony Express trail to see what happened to the Wild West. During his 142 days on horseback from St. Joseph, MO, to Sacramento, CA, Grant encounters deserts and mountains wild with mustangs. Between that, he finds ranches, farms, and a lot of paved road. More than a historical reenactment, the author's exploration captures the daily lives of the people who today reside in some of the most desolate areas in the U.S. He also interweaves stories about some of the horses in this narrative. Readers get a glimpse at the American wilderness that remains home to ranchers, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and displaced Indigenous peoples from both sides of the Mississippi. VERDICT Will appeal to lovers of U.S. history and horses.—John Rodzvilla
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-14
Genial exploration of the breakneck-ride world of the Wild West’s postal carriers.
“I got two questions for you. One, how crazy does a guy have to be to ride a horse from Missouri to California? And two, how sore is your ass right about now?” So asked a Nevada rancher of Grant, well into his 100-day, cross-country travels. The questions were apposite. Over the course of his entertaining narrative, the author has occasion to think about at least the first at some leisure. Whereas the original Pony Express, which ran for less than two years, took 10 days to make the distance from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, Grant increased the time tenfold. As Grant points out, the original riders didn’t have to face the dangers of “civilization and its infrastructure,” as represented by the mile-wide, multilane bridge over the Missouri River just outside St. Joseph and the mad traffic of places such as Salt Lake City. The author shows that sometimes, it does help to ask, for he had assumed that the good people of the city would be in church on Sunday morning, when he hoped to guide his two geldings, named Chicken Fry and Badger, out of town. Not a chance, said one friendly fellow: “We call that the Mormon 500…and there’s always traffic.” Aware of the vagaries of Sierra Nevada snowfall, too, the interlocutor tells Grant he’d best pick up the pace: “Might be time to find another gear, partner.” Amazingly, knowing little but with a wellspring of friendly intention and a lively curiosity about the places he saw and people he met, Grant survived it all. Call it a Travels With Charley with two beat-up but utterly dependable mounts instead of a poodle, and you’ve got an idea of what this good-natured narrative is all about. It will also appeal to fans of Rinker Buck.
Well and self-effacingly written and a pleasure for armchair travelers and Old West buffs.
