Best known for his popular Western fiction, American author Zane Grey has often been called the "Homer of the West." His works influenced many subsequent writers in the genre and provided the raw material for dozens of popular Western films.

This book is a dictionary of the major and minor characters in Zane Grey's Western novels and short fiction, providing a brief description and summary of each character and identifying the novels or short stories in which the character appears. Many entries also include an analysis of the character's thematic significance within the author's Western fiction as a whole.