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A review by sarahanne8382
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
3.0
Not my cup of tea, but still very good. Jane Withersteen is the heiress to her father's ranch on the southern Utah frontier in 1871. Because she prefers to befriend all, not just fellow Mormons, her churchmen are determined to convince her of the error of her ways and employ ever harsher methods to do so. Luckily good men of the sage, such as her former rider, Byrne Vinters, and infamous Mormon-hunter Lassiter, come to her aide and allow her to withstand the persecution a bit longer. Vinters ends up nursing a friend's long-lost daughter back to health and Jane finds herself relying more and more on the gunslinger Lassiter, while simultaneously urging him to change his Mormon-killing ways.
Wonderful melodrama abounds, but there's also way too much description of the scenery and, showing that westerns are romance for men, an obsession with purity which means the romantic action centers around reluctant admissions of feeling and men doing daring deeds for the women they love. Not what I would normally choose for myself, but I'm glad I read it to get a feel for the genre and because it was pretty entertaining when Grey wasn't busy waxing poetic about the purple sage, yet again. Also, it's maybe a tad dated in it's unabashed Mormon-hating.
Wonderful melodrama abounds, but there's also way too much description of the scenery and, showing that westerns are romance for men, an obsession with purity which means the romantic action centers around reluctant admissions of feeling and men doing daring deeds for the women they love. Not what I would normally choose for myself, but I'm glad I read it to get a feel for the genre and because it was pretty entertaining when Grey wasn't busy waxing poetic about the purple sage, yet again. Also, it's maybe a tad dated in it's unabashed Mormon-hating.