Riders of the Purple Sage Book Review.

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Title: Riders of the Purple Sage.

Author: Zane Grey.

Gene: Classic, Western, Action/Adventure.

Plot: Jane Withersteen was raised a Mormon, lives in a Mormon community in Utah and attends the Mormon church, she is even pressured to marry Elder Tull, who already has several wives. But when she befriends what her Mormon people deem a “Gentile,” her world rapidly changes. First, all her ranch hands leave, then the Mormon elders threaten Bern Venters, the young man she’d befriended, and they let her know they’re against her desire to adopt little Fay Larkin. The magnificent ranch that she inherited from her father is in danger of becoming a ruin. And then Lassiter rides in. A mystery surrounds this man, who wears black leather and carries two guns on him, yet he befriends Jane and Venters and goes to work for the former, helping her to keep her land and drive off the wild riders who attempt to make off with her cattle.

After one of the herds is driven off by rustlers, Venters sets out to track the troublesome band and unwittingly shoots one of the leaders who turns out to be a girl. Stuck with her on his hands and in rustler territory, Venters holes up in a cunningly hidden valley in the canyon and several months pass, at the end of which he realizes with a shock that he’s fallen in love with the pretty girl he shot. Meanwhile, at the ranch Jane tries to unravel the mystery that surrounds Lassiter and convince him not to kill any of her churchmen, he’s killed Mormons before and has a personal grudge against them but the reason for this she doesn’t learn till all the trouble winds up to one dramatic climax in the classic style of a showdown.

Likes/Dislikes: As with all westerns, there is always a gunfight and therefore there is always blood and someone always dies. That taken into consideration and the perversity of the Mormon religion, this is a very good book with nothing inappropriate in it. Venters does live for sometime prier to marriage with his wounded charge but nothing inappropriate happens and Lassiter does have a desire for revenge but this lessens toward the end. Read it for history or for the sake of a good story, either way, you can’t go wrong with this novel.

Rating: PG-14 and up, for reading level and the Mormon subplot.

Date Report Written: August 6, 2010.