A new Zane Grey novel But even more thrilling is that Zane Grey chose for the central character of this culminating work the father of our country, George Washington, as a young man on the frontier. Grey presents the drama of the life of young Washington: from his birth to his early surveying trips into the Ohio River Valley and the Shenandoah, to his role in General Braddock's disastrous campaign to wrest Fort Duquesne from the French, to his taking command of the Continental Army in 1775. George Washington, Frontiersman is a newly discovered American classic: one of the most popular authors of the twentieth century taking on the story of the father of our nation.