I’ve been hearing about Zane Grey almost my whole life. A famous western writer who was active in the early 20th century wrote about the old west. I used to watch Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater when I was a kid. I have never read his books until this one “Riders of the Purple Sage” his best seller.

I grew up in Zane Grey country, the Mogollon Rim country in Arizona. Home of desperadoes, cowboys, and outlaws way back when.

So I was expecting some sort of outlaw, desperado, rustler, lawman type novel when I read my first Grey novel. And there is quite a bit of that along with some great description of the country of southern Utah. A land of hidden canyons, secret passages, and beautiful valleys. There were outlaws, rustlers, and heroic hard bitten cowboys. But I’ll tell the dirty little secret of this book.

It’s a Romance Novel!! Oh my gosh, these cowboys when they meet the women their hearts go all aflutter, falling in pure, innocent love for these various damsels in distress. Page after page after page. I was never more glad to finish a novel than this thing. There were some “good parts in it” horseback chases across the sage flats. Hard charging horses. All the shoot outs and action is “off camera” if you will. They are told about afterwards.

Other than that it reminds of way back when when I worked in an office where one of the secretary’s didn’t have much to do so she read romance novels all day long. So I’d come by and say, hey let me see that. So I’d take the book and standing there for a few seconds read aloud what page she had been reading and it was all about heaving bosoms, quivering thighs, breathless anticipation, and soaring love (that is about as far as it went in this lady’s books). That is Riders of the Purple Sage, romance for cowboys.

The women are not treated much better. They are described as simple, childlike, and weak.

So I give this book three stars out of five for historical and literary interest. Otherwise I was pretty disappointed.