Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

In the little two-horse town where I grew up there was a general store.  It had twin doors at the front.  The keeper opened these every morning and lined the little built-in shelves with cheap paperback novels.  You had two choices: romances or westerns.

I always passed up the chance to buy either - romances and westerns are generally not appealing to my tastes. Well, I finally bit the bullet and read a Zane Grey novel.  Did I enjoy it?  I reckon I surely did, y'all.  I liked it a lot.  All up, Riders of the Purple Sage is a real surprise package.

The story is simple enough.  The year is 1871, and the setting is southern Utah.  Jane Withersteen has inherited a substantial, well-watered cattle ranch.  She is single, rich and a Mormon.  Unlike her brethren, Jane has no qualms about hiring and befriending 'gentiles', as non-Mormons are called in the book.  This puts her at odds with elements within the Mormon community, especially those who are interested in winning her hand in marriage.  A campaign of attrition is waged against Jane to bring her to heel, and her cattle and horses are rustled in large numbers.  Standing by her side are two gentiles: Bern Venters, a hired hand, and Jim Lassiter.  Lassiter is a new-comer with a dread reputation as a deadly gunslinger.  Can these two help Jane recover her stock and keep her homestead?  The answer may surprise you.

The first notable thing about Riders of the Purple Sage is Zane Grey's facility for nature writing.  The weather and the landscape are almost characters in this tale, and they are never far away from the main action.  It is easy to write about nature, but it is very hard to do it well.  Tolkien and John Buchan are masters at it, and Grey can hold his own in this department.  He is a bit more prolix than either Tolkien or Buchan, but he particularly adept at imbuing his descriptions with the dynamism found in nature itself.

Then there is the smouldering-but-understated sexual tension. It's there, there's lots of it, and it runs throughout the book.  It blossoms into love, sometimes in unexpected places and for unexpected reasons, and has unforeseen consequences all round.  A brutal heart is counterpointed with its capacity for tenderness.

The story pivots around Jane Withersteen, and she is the most finely drawn character in the book.  She has to contend with the conflicts between the outward demands of  her religion and the inward demands of her personal faith, and between her common-sense and her emotions.  Sometimes Grey expresses  old-fashioned attitudes (the book was published in 1912), but for the most part Jane Withersteen would not be out of place in the modern world.

Finally, there is the action.  Riders of the Purple Sage does have a lot of action, but it is heavily punctuated with lengthy periods of introspection.  Psychology is just as important to the story as guns and horses.  What gun violence there is happens mostly out of sight, and more is made of the characters' attitude to weapons and the circumstances under which they are used.  There are a couple of thrilling chase sequences, and the nobility of the horses is brought to the fore in rather a stirring way.  One can't help but love Venters' horse Wrangle.

Yes, Riders of the Purple Sage is a surprise package worth opening.