Trans Wiki Bio: Pearl Grey
A Short Alternative Biography
By Maryanne Peters

Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author and adventurer best known for her popular adventure novels and stories written for young women. Her novel “American Frontier – Women of the Purple Sage” is her best-selling book.

In addition to the commercial success of her printed works, her books have had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and television productions.

Early life

Pearl Zane Grey was born January 31, 1872, in Zaneville Ohio the fourth of five children, and it appears that her sex was indeterminate. She was given the name Pearl and clothed in dresses as was common for both sexes at the time. Her father was Lewis M. Grey, a dentist. Her mother Allie was born Alice Josephine Zane, whose ancestor Robert Zane gave the town of her birth its name.

As a child, Pearl was frequently bullied by an older brother and subjected to severe beatings from her father, and so took refuge in the care and attention of her mother and grandmother. Pearl chose to attend school as a girl. Her female relatives could then insist on her being treated appropriately.

Nevertheless, Pearl grew up an avid reader of adventure stories and dime novels and acquired a taste for an unconventional life. Despite warnings by her father that she must break free of skirts, Pearl to all steps necessary to ensure that her future was to be female.

Pearl wrote her first story, “Jane of the Cave”, when she was fifteen.

Due to shame from a severe financial setback in 1889 caused by a poor investment, Lewis Grey moved his family from Zanesville and started again in Columbus Ohio. While her father struggled to re-establish his dental practice, Pearl attended as his nurse and performed basic extractions until the state board intervened. But Pearl had acquired skills that would be useful later.

In those days she could not go on to study dentistry but she did attend Pennsylvania University and study English literature. She was an indifferent scholar, barely achieving a minimum average. Outside class, she spent his time on creative writing, especially poetry. Her shy nature and teetotaling set her apart from other students, and she socialized little. Her intention was to become a writer.

During a summer break Pearl became involved in a sexual encounter with a young man which resulted in her father having to pay a settlement of $133.40 to the man’s family to avoid charges of indecency being laid. All details of this matter were concealed but it made it difficult for Pearl to return to Penn in the fall as planned.

Instead Pearl obtained work as a dental assistant in New York City and she began to write in the evening to offset the tedium of dental practice. She struggled financially and emotionally. She was a natural writer but her early efforts were stiff and grammatically weak.

She relished life in the big city but still took the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and on one such outing she met her future husband Jolyon Roth. “Jolly” as he was known seemed ready to accept Pearl regardless or her physical and personal quirks, although it was a long and intense courtship marked by frequent quarrels. Pearl and Jolly married five years later in 1905.

But Pearl has always made it clear that she was not to be tied to home life. She told him: “But I love to be free. I cannot change my spots. The ordinary woman is satisfied with a husband and a family but I am a million miles from being that kind of woman and no amount of trying will ever do any good ... I shall never lose my spirit:.

Over the next two decades Pearl travelled the nation and the world, and wrote, returning to Jolly every now and again for a moment of peace and the intimacy that the peripatetic life denied her. Jolly offered he solid emotional support as disclosed in their correspondence, but also financial support until the publication of her first significant success “The last Lady of the Plains” in 1908. It would be another four years before “American Frontier – Women of the Purple Sage” would cement her position.

Writing Career

“East of the Pecos” published in 1937 was perhaps an effort towards autobiography given her unusual circumstances. It tells the story of a cowboy and an adventurer at heart (like Pearl herself) who feels compels to head east for a new life living as a woman. This touching tale perhaps reveals that Pearl had an inner desire to settle that she never achieved in life.

His earlier story (1936) “The Trail Drivers” explores similar transgender themes when the woman taking over the chuckwagon for a team of cowboys turns out be not the sister of their old comrade, but the man himself choosing to live life as a frontier lady.

In large part her stories of the old west were influenced by her open sexual relationship with Brandon Montenegro, a part native American. The two met while hiking Eaton Canyon. Of him she wrote,
“I saw his flowing raven mane against the rocks of the canyon. I have seen the red skin of the Navajo and the olive of the Spaniards, but he was an apparition. He seemed to be the embodiment of the West I portray in my books, open and wild.”

She was not faithful to Jolly and as she relied on him less for material support she depended on him to proof her work and submit it to publishers while she travelled in search of inspiration and stimulation. Travel also allowed her to write with confidence about the American West, its characters, and its landscape. Treacherous river crossings, unpredictable beasts, bone-chilling cold, searing heat, parching thirst, bad water, irascible tempers, and heroic cooperation all became real to her.

As Pearl Grey had become a household name, other publishers caught on to the commercial potential of the Western novel. Many writers took on the genre with varying degrees of success, but Pearl remained the only woman, and her stories centered around the female characters led her to become very popular with young women in particular.

Perhaps because she wrote from this perspective her stories were not adapted to the screen as readily as the work of male writers of Westerns.

During the 1930s, Pearl continued to write, but the Great Depression hurt the publishing industry and her sales fell off. But she continued to earn royalty income, so she did better than many financially.

Reception by Critics

The more books Pearl sold, the more the established critics attacked her. Some claimed her depictions of the West were too fanciful, and not faithful to the moral realities of the frontier. They thought her characters unrealistic and much larger-than-life. Pearl took many of these criticisms to heart, betraying her feminine sensitivity.

Her novel “The Vanishing American” first serialized in The Ladies Home Journal n 1922, prompted a heated debate. Pearl portrayed the struggle of the Navajo to preserve their identity and culture against corrupting influences of the white government and missionaries which enraged religious groups.

Death

Pearl Zane Grey died of heart failure on October 23, 1939, aged 67.

A Young Pearl Grey

Biographer’s Note:
Erin pointed out to me that Zane Grey’s given name was Pearl (apparently pearl grey is a color!) and for some reason I just started to imagine that his parents had given their child the option. Certainly he was born at a time when parents routinely has sons wearing dresses and long hair until they were old enough for school. I simply lifted his bio from Wikipedia and made the necessary adjustments.

But this gives rise to two questions:

1. What other characters from history can be given the Trans Wiki Bio treatment; and
2. Should I write “The Trail Drivers” and “East of the Pecos”? Erin has suggested that there be a follow up collection of westerns following publication of "All Her Misfortune" on Amazon

© Maryanne Peters 2021