Riders of the Purple Sage (Heathen Edition)
Zane Grey (1872-1939) was a prolific American author whose idealization of the American frontier gave rise to a new literary genre: the western. In 1912 he published his best-selling book, Riders of the Purple Sage, which many claim to be both the most popular western novel of all time and the story responsible for singularly shaping the genre's formula. Set in the canyon country of southern Utah, 1871 - whose landscape is rendered with such vividness it becomes a character in its own right - the story tells of Venters, a gentile fed up with Mormon pretense; Lassiter, a renowned, roving gunslinger on a mission; and Jane Withersteen, a Mormon woman torn between religious duty, familial legacy, and the yearnings of her heart, who strives to maintain peace within the local Mormon community, led by the oppressive Bishop Dyer, after she refuses to marry the rapacious Elder Tull.
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"The greatest western ever written." -Frank Gruber
"Grey's place? Numero uno." -Will Henry
"Zane Grey epitomized the mythical West that should have been . . . the standout among them is Riders of the Purple Sage." -True West
"Poignant in its emotional qualities." -The New York Times
"Riders of the Purple Sage conveys a sense of spaciousness and light and color . . . The story is one of fierce passions; there is much gunplay and some killing." -Harper's
"Zane Grey is a capital writer of plot stories of the kind which rough-and-ready critics say are 'full of good, red blood.'" -The Outlook
" . . . night riders and chill mystery, throbbing romance, wild horses, and hot death are the elements Zane Grey has used in compounding this stirring tale." -McClure's Magazine
"A powerful work, exceedingly well written." -Brooklyn Eagle
"Zane Grey scores again." -New York World
"Has the rush and sense of adventure." -The Independent
"Episodes of bravery, scoundrelism, chivalry, horsemanship, and ready shooting . . . " -The World (New York)
"Well-handed melodramatic story of hairbreadth escapes." -Booklist
"He possesses a powerful imagination, of the myth-making type which glorifies and enlarges all that it touches, and in his best work, Riders of the Purple Sage, he uses imagination to the utmost." -The Saturday Review of Literature
