Riders of the Purple Sage (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

by Zane Grey

Fred Stenson (Introduction) and Douglas Duer (Illustrator)

Born in 1875, Pearl Zane Grey was raised in Zanesville, Ohio, a town founded by his mother's family, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1896. His father was a dentist in Ohio, and Grey followed him in that profession, but in New York City. His passion for the American West was aroused in 1907 when Grey had an opportunity to tour the West with Buffalo Jones, a longtime hunter and adventurer. Under Jones' guidance Grey traveled through the desert, chased wild horses and hunted cougars. His journals of the time were filled with glowing passages about the beauty of the land. With the publication of "Riders of the Purple Sage" Grey found his audience and went on to publish a total of 85 books. In 1937, now a wealthy writer with homes in California, Arizona and Tahiti, he suffered a stroke while fishing for steelhead on the Rogue River in Oregon. He recuperated sufficiently to go on a fishing expedition to Australia but suffered a heart attack and died on October 23, 1939 at his home in Altadena, California.

• ISBN10: 0760757550
• ISBN13: 9780760757550
• Publish Date: 17 June 2004
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 4 April 2017
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Barnes & Noble Inc
• Edition: Customer-Specific
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

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.