Inspired by the life and adventures of his own great-great grandmother, Betty Zane was Zane Grey's first novel and launched his career as a master writer of rousing frontier and Western adventures.

Betty Zane is the story of the events culminating in the last battle of the American Revolution, when two hundred Redcoats from British-controlled Detroit along with four hundred Shawnee Indian attacked the small, wood-palisaded Ford Henry on the western frontier. The heroine of the battle--a young, spunky, and beautiful frontier girl--was Betty Zane.

Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that were a basis for the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American frontier. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his best-selling book. In addition to the commercial success of his printed works, they had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and television productions.