Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (1912) – Book #1 of 3 in the Riders of the Purple Sage series.

In my searching for Louis L’Amour books at thrift stores and Little Free Libraries this summer, I also happened to grab a few Zane Grey novels for my horde, just in case. I wanted to see how he measured up to the more modern Western master.

I’d never read Zane Grey till now, because I never had a penchant for Westerns and wouldn’t know how to compare him. I’m sort of glad I waited, because had this been my first-ever Western novel, I’d have given up way early. It’s not that the book is poorly written—it’s a product of its time—or that the story isn’t engaging. It’s just that it’s a romance wrapped in Western chaps, a battle of morals and wills in the borderlands of Utah and not really my thing.

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Quick Summary of Riders of the Purple Sage

The novel covers several storylines, but most prominently that of Jane Withersteen, a Mormon woman who has offended her church by showing charity to Gentiles and by standing up for her rights as a woman. Into her depressing, mistreated life strolls Lassiter, the killer of Mormons, who rescues her from attackers and slowly but surely falls in love with her, if not with her religion. We get a quick sense of this book’s theme, in fact, in Chapter 1, when the hero Lassiter screams at some Elders, “To Hell with your Mormon Law!”

Later in the story, we also meet Venters who rescues a young woman from a life of crime and hides her in a secret valley, as they too fall slowly in love. All the while, evil men hunt Venters and Lassiter as they try to protect their women, and we come to learn how rough and tumble the Mormon borderlands really are.

Feels Like a Silent movie

As I read this story, I could never shake the feeling that it was a story. I know that sounds odd, but sometimes I read a book and am so engrossed in the tale that I feel as if it were real, as if I were genuinely living the adventure alongside the characters. Louis L’Amour can sometimes bring such realism to his writing—I can see the night sky and taste the dust of the trail as his riders drive their cattle.

Reading this book, though, felt like watching a silent movie. Yes, I realize its publication date means it too is a product of its time, but the “cliches” of masked riders in black, silhouetted atop a ridge, etc. prevented me from feeling part of the story. The outdated language is to be expected (“by and by”), but what genuinely annoyed me was the voicing of internal dialogue that could easily have been presented another way. Take for example this thought process, voiced by the character not described by the author:

“A good tracker could trail me,” he muttered. “And I’d be cornered here. Let’s see. Rustlers are a lazy set when they’re not on the ride. I’ll risk it. Then I’ll change my hiding-place.” (85)

Another example is this melodramatic climax of Jane declaring his eventual love for Lassiter:

Oh, you’ll make me love you! How can I help but love you? My heart must be stone. But—oh, Lassiter, wait, wait! Give me time. I’m not what I was. Once it was so easy to love. Now it’s easy to hate. Wait! My faith in God—some God—still lives. By it I see happier times for you, poor passion-swayed wanderer! For me—a miserable, broken woman. I loved your sister Milly. I will love you. I can’t have fallen so low—I can’t be so abandoned by God—that I’ve no love left to give you. Wait! Let us forget Milly’s sad life. Ah, I knew it as no one else on earth! There’s one thing I shall tell you—if you are at my death-bed, but I can’t speak now. (306)

The Emancipation of Mormon Women

That whole declaration brings me to the main theme of the book, the necessary emancipation of Mormon women from the tragedies of polygamy. Despite Lassiter’s life-calling as “the Mormon Killer” and the near-demonic characterization of the Mormon elders and bishops in the story, I still can’t quite peg Zane Grey’s view of Mormonism as a religion. A few lines from the book keep me curious.

For example, Lassiter says to Jane in Chapter 2:

I believe Mormon women are the best an’ noblest, the most long-sufferin’, and the blindest, unhappiest women on earth.

Later, a Gentile woman reacts to Jane’s kindness this way:

Jane Withersteen, may Heaven bless you! I’ve been deeply grateful to you. But because you’re a Mormon I never felt close to you till now. I don’t know much about religion as religion, but your God and my God are the same.

Grey never gets theological, so I assume he viewed Mormonism as simply another Christian sect or denomination, not the heresy that it is, a non-Christian cult based on extrabiblical writings that denies the supremacy of Christ Jesus and deifies man. What Grey stood against instead was the outdated practice of polygamy and its resultant abuse of both power and the subjugated women.

At one point, Lassiter voices his frustration and belief that the Mormon men deserved death for the way they treated their women (to which Jane then responds with grace):

“Yes, I said unfaithful. You’re faithful to your Bishop an’ unfaithful to yourself. You’re false to your womanhood, an’ true to your religion. But for a savin’ innocence you’d have made yourself low an’ vile— betrayin’ yourself, betrayin’ me—all to bind my hands an’ keep me from snuffin’ out Mormon life. It’s your damned Mormon blindness.”

“Is it vile—is it blind—is it only Mormonism to save human life? No, Lassiter, that’s God’s law, divine, universal for all Christians.” (182)

Again, Lassiter tells her the truth about her religion, as hard as it is for Jane to hear:

“You are a woman, fine an’ big an’ strong, an’ your heart matches your size. But in mind you’re a child. I’ll say a little more— then I’m done. I’ll never mention this again. Among many thousands of women you’re one who has bucked against your churchmen. They tried you out, an’ failed of persuasion, an’ finally of threats. You meet now the cold steel of a will as far from Christlike as the universe is wide. You’re to be broken. Your body’s to be held, given to some man, made, if possible, to bring children into the world. But your soul? . . . What do they care for your soul?” (200)

Later, Jane herself struggles with her faith, her religion, but again responds not with apostasy but with love:

But here the damnable verdict blistered her that the more she sacrificed herself, the blacker grew the souls of her churchmen. There was something terribly wrong with her soul, something terribly wrong with her churchmen and her religion. In the whirling gulf of her thought there was yet one shining light to guide her, to sustain her in her hope; and it was that, despite her errors and her frailties and her blindness, she had one absolute and unfaltering hold on ultimate and supreme justice. That was love. “Love your enemies as yourself!” was a divine word, entirely free from any church or creed. (236)

All this talk against one outgrowth of Mormonism is accurate, but it fails to deal with the crux of the matter: that Mormonism is at its heart a heretical cult, and like most cults, it thrives on the power of the leaders and the fears of its adherents.

I met a older Mormon “apostate” at the Costco cafeteria in St. George, UT, this summer. He told me that after serving as a missionary in Asia for many years, he eventually left the LDS church because “religion is just about power and greed.” I wish I had more time to chat with him, to tell him that yes, this is the problem with “religion” (especially Mormonism), but not with God, Jesus, or the Bible! But he had finished his hotdog and left us with a kind goodbye.

I don’t know how Zane Grey felt about Mormonism, but I know how I feel. Likewise, I can see that folks in the LDS church are some of “the best an’ noblest, the most long-sufferin’, and the blindest, unhappiest [people] on earth.” And it makes me ask of the whole religion and its greedy, fear-mongering, power-hungry leadership: “What do they care for your soul?”

Some Favorite Portions of the Book

While much of this novel is romance and dialogue, there are some purely enjoyable portions that show why Zane Grey was such a favorite author. A few scenes sit in my mind like masterfully painted landscapes of the Old West. The storm description in Chapter 13, for example, is a beautiful scene of the power of nature. The horse race across the uneven plains in Chapter 17 is both intense and wonderfully terrible.

Nothing compares, though, to the description of the secret valley and the hope it gives anyone fantasizing about living a hermitic life. When Venters finds this ancient, native hideaway and protects his dying ward there, he discovers ways to keep themselves there long-term. Water, provisions, meat, shelter—it’s all there, and it all whets my appetite to get out into the wilds and finds a similar place of my own.

Conclusion

Although this story is threaded together with bloody gunfights and exciting chases, the fact that it’s really a pairing of two romances makes it less of a winning Western in my book. I doubt I’ll read the second or thirds parts of the series—The Rainbow Trail (1915) and The Desert Crucible (1915)—but I suppose when I’m back in Southern Utah again, I may be tempted to discover what happens next.

Zane Grey didn’t topple Louis L’Amour for me with this book, but I do like his concluding thoughts about the violence and passions of the Wild West:

Yes, the border was a bloody place. But life had always been bloody. Men were blood-spillers. Phases of the history of the world flashed through her mind—Greek and Roman wars, dark, mediæval times, the crimes in the name of religion. On sea, on land, everywhere—shooting, stabbing, cursing, clashing, fighting men! Greed, power, oppression, fanaticism, love, hate, revenge, justice, freedom—for these, men killed one another. (354)

©2026 E.T.

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