She is resisting becoming a polygamous wife of a Mormon elder, which would effectively cede her estate to the church. Plot Summary: Jane Withersteen, a young and beautiful Mormon rancher, is in conflict with the corrupt patriarchal leadership of her Mormon community. First up, we head on out to the western canyons with the cowboys… He began churning out a phenomenal three books a year and on his death in 1939 notched up an impressive body of work and led an extremely colorful personal life which could itself be the subject of a great novel!Īs a classic Western, Riders of the Purple Sage is indeed the book that laid down the rules for this genre.This month we are reading adventure and sea stories. Both were unsuccessful till he published Riders of the Purple Sage in 1912.Īfter this there was no looking back. After marriage and a successful career, Zane wrote his first novel Betty Zane in 1903 and another in 1909. While studying to become a dentist himself, Zane did odd jobs to supplement the family income after his father suffered financial losses. It was an adventure story which enraged his father, a dentist, who felt that he was wasting his time with frivolous nonsense. He wrote his first novel when he was just fifteen. It has memorable and well fleshed out characters, a many layered plot and interesting bits of social commentary. However, Riders of the Purple Sage bucks this trend. Most cowboy stories tend to follow a simple revenge plot with a little romance thrown in. Venters volunteers to help her and encounters a mysterious Masked Rider whose identity comes as a shock to everyone. Jane herself is a wealthy rancher, whose herd is being surreptitiously rustled by unknown cattle thieves.
His own hatred of their group is also slowly revealed. He strikes fear into the hearts of the Mormons who are strangely subdued in his presence. At this moment, a mysterious stranger, known only as Lassiter, appears and rescues Bern. She has many good friends among non-Mormons and one of them, Bern Venters, is captured by a group of Mormons who set up a kangaroo court and condemn him to death. They are compelling her to marry one of their own sect, though Jane thinks otherwise. It opens with the young and lovely Jane Withersteen being victimized and harassed by her Mormon Church elders for associating with Gentiles or Non-Mormons. Riders of the Purple Sage is set in 1871, in a remote part of Utah. It portrays the archetypal lone gun slinger, out to wreak revenge for past wrongs who falls foul of the rich and powerful and finally rides away into the sunset, having rid the town of poisonous villains! Dubbed the “most popular Western of all times” Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage was the benchmark by which every other novel in the “Western” genre came to be judged.
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