Zane Grey

Pearl Zane Gray studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, and later played with a minor league team. He met and later married Lina Roth, whose inheritance helped support his efforts to become a writer. He pioneered the Western genre. His first western, Heritage of the Desert, became a bestseller in 1910, and he went on to write over sixty books, many of which became films. In The Mysterious Rider, Bill Bellound's foster daughter Columbine agrees to marry his son Jack out of love for her foster father. Jack is a coward, drunkard, gambler, and thief, and Columbine really loves the cowboy Wilson Moore. Things are changed by the arrival of the title character, a gentle and kind middle-aged man who is so fierce a gunfighter he has earned the nickname Hell Bent Wade, and he will play a crucial role in righting the wrongs of the story.

Pearl Zane Gray studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, and later played with a minor league team. He met and later married Lina Roth, whose inheritance helped support his efforts to become a writer. He pioneered the Western genre. His first western, Heritage of the Desert, became a bestseller in 1910, and he went on to write over sixty books, many of which became films. In The Mysterious Rider, Bill Bellound's foster daughter Columbine agrees to marry his son Jack out of love for her foster father. Jack is a coward, drunkard, gambler, and thief, and Columbine really loves the cowboy Wilson Moore. Things are changed by the arrival of the title character, a gentle and kind middle-aged man who is so fierce a gunfighter he has earned the nickname Hell Bent Wade, and he will play a crucial role in righting the wrongs of the story.

Author of more than sixty popular, highly-influential Western novels, Zane Grey was born "Pearl" Zane Gray. Although no one knows for certain, it seems likely that Grey thought that "Pearl" was too feminine a name for an author of Western adventure. Zane was Grey's family name, and he was intensely proud of his Western pioneer heritage. His first-published book, Betty Zane (1803), was inspired by the true story of Revolutionary War frontier heroism in his family. Grey's early books about his own family were not commercially successful. Beginning with his first Western novel, The Heritage of the Desert, Zane Grey launched upon one of the most influential writing careers in American history. The Desert of Wheat was first published in 1919. It tells the story of Kurt Dorn, a young American wheat farmer who is torn between saving his farm and defending the woman he loves, and defending America during the First World War. Kurt does eventually choose to go to war, where he realizes how futile and destructive warfare is. With a lyrical ending, The Desert of War is different from Grey's Western novels, but equally satisfying to readers. The Desert of Wheat was made into a film called Riders of the Dawn in 1920.

When a group of travelers hire a guide to take them from Fort Pitt to Fort Henry, they suspect nothing of the man. But one night, their guide disappears and they discover that they've been led astray. They are nearly 18 miles from Fort Henry and they worry for their lives. Fortunately, for them, Jonathan Zane and his companion were dispatched by Colonel Zane to search for them and they reach Fort Henry safely. Helen Sheppard's family goes to Fort Henry to start a new life. She has many young men who are interested in her. One especially seems obsessed with her, a Mr. Brandt from Detroit. Helen, however, finds him crass and ungentlemanly. She finds Jonathan Zane quite alluring, but because of his frontiersman upbringing, he has very little proper manners. His gruff mannerisms upset Helen. Then Helen overhears Mr. Brandt talk of a plan which involves the guide Mr. Sheppard had hired to bring them to Fort Henry. A plan that involves her abduction. Rather than run back to the fort and risk capture, she runs into the forest to find Jonathan Zane, who is on patrol. And she must find them before Mr. Brandt and his men manage to steal everything from Fort Henry and destroy the lives of everyone who lives there. Zane Grey is best known for writing over ninety pulp and adventure novels set in the romanticized Old West. His novels include Lone Star Rangers and Riders of the Purple Sage. He is an inductee Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. The Last Trail is the sequel to Spirit of the Border.

In his later work, Grey portrayed Mormonism more neutrally -- but here, in this book, those evil polyandering men are villains, plain and simple. Well, ewww -- there's a reason why the Mormons generally gave it up, and don't think being part of the union was really all there was to it. Really, gross That said, here in Riders of the Purple Sage -- and in the sequel, The Rainbow Trail -- the Mormon men take it on the chin. They're heavies, here -- villains who use their religion as an excuse for greed and lust. Great adventure for those who don't mind thinking about the development of mores in the twentieth century . . .