Riders of the purple sage
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Riders of the Purple Sage is a novel that tells the story of a woman by the name of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome persecution by members of her polygamous Mormon fundamentalist church. A leader of the church, Elder Tull, wants to marry her, but she has evaded him for years. Things get complicated when Bern Venters and Lassiter, a famous gunman and killer of Mormons help her look after her cattle and horses. She is blinded by her faith to see that her church men are the ones harming her. But when her adopted child disappears... she abandons her beliefs and discovers her true love. The plot deepens and it involves a horse race and a decision to whether to roll a large stone that forever closes off the only way in or out of her hiding place. A second plot involves a innocent girl Bern Venters accidentally shot…or is she innocent?! The lives of all these people intertwine ….past…present and future! Preceded by Zane Grey's book: 'The Heritage of the West' and Followed by Zane Grey's book: 'The Rainbow Trail'
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2 primary books#1 in Riders of the Purple Sage
Riders of the Purple Sage is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 1912 with contributions by Zane Grey and Margaret Tarner.
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Read this long ago as a callow youth. As I remember, I quite enjoyed it.
Time for a re-read perhaps.
I read a lot of westerns when I was young - mostly [a:Louis L'Amour 858 Louis L'Amour https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1343675199p2/858.jpg] and Zane Grey. I recall preferring Grey; maybe L'Amour's sagas were too complex for me. Still, I never got around to Riders of the Purple Sage, so when I saw this for free, I thought I'd go back to those childhood days for a visit.Reading this book reminded me that I've changed, and that westerns deal with a lot of things I don't care for - horse riding and cattle ranching among them - and that Grey and L'Amour wrote in a different time, about an even earlier time. Men are strong and silent, women are dependent. This book holds pretty much true to the western stereotype. Hard, mysterious gunslinger, lonely rich woman, cattle rustlers. Here, the main villains are Mormons, and even in the context of the day (the somewhat recent end of polygamy), it's jarring. The plot is complex, and frankly doesn't hold up that well - some parts are fairly obvious, some convoluted, some just not credible. Characterization is thin. Overall, the book reads more as a romance with horses than a western with romance.The scenic description is on the purple (forgive me) side, but it's still attractive. Grey does a nice job of putting us in the scene, and of describing beautiful terrain. If the exact geography is vague, we still know what the place looks like. And yes, a lot of it is covered with sage.As a trip to memoryland, this was something of a disappointment. I'm frankly unsure why this book was seen as a watershed for westerns. I could swear that the other Grey books I read were better, but I'm not too inclined to check. I think I'm better off keeping a warm hazy memory of summers with Zane Grey than actually digging back into them any further.For newcomers to the genre - I'm not sure this is the place to start with westerns. It's an easy read, and scenic, but full enough of present day -isms that you may want to look elsewhere for a first exposure. I'd probably give it a 2.5, but I round up in favor of nostalgia.
