His (Zane's) father was
a farmer and a preacher

Her (Sage's) father was
a master plumber and a
professional wildlife
photographer

Lassiter in RIDERS OF
THE PURPLE SAGE,
a gunman lost his a
girl he loved to a
Mormon Preacher

Mercedes Cade in
FROM THE CONVENT
TO THE RAWHIDE:
THE SAGA OF SADIE
CADE AND VI MONTANA
a Mormon missionary
wins the girl she loves
at the Pish Convent

born in Zanesville, Ohio,
Zane's mother a Quaker of
Danish Background

"Slingerland hated the railroad, and he could not see as Neale did, or any of the engineers or builders. This old trapper had the vision of the Indian - that far-seeing eye cleared by distance and silence, and the force of the great, lonely hills. Progress was great, but nature unspoiled was greater. If a race could not breed all stronger men, through its great movements, it might better not breed any, for the bad over-multiplied the good, and so their needs magnified into greed."

Sage Sweetwater presents
the West as the rebirth of
the dime store pulp novel

In 1912 the publishing company Harpers brought out Riders of the Purple Sage. It sold two million copies, was filmed three times, and became Grey's best-known western. It told the story of an enterprising woman, Jane Witherspoon, a rich Mormon. "Trouble between the Mormons and the Gentiles of the community would make her unhappy. She was Mormon-born, and she was a friend of to poor and unfortunate Gentiles. She wished only to go on doing good and being happy. And she thought of what that great ranch meant to her. She loved it all - the grove of cottonwoods, the old stone house, the amber-tinted water, and the droves of shaggy, dusty horses and mustangs, the sleek, clean-limbed, blooded racers, and the browsing herds of cattle and the lean, sun-browned riders of the sage." She finds protection for her ranch and herself from an mysterious hero, Lassiter, who hates Mormons for his own reasons.

social commentary on
the treatment of American
Indians on the Reservation,
a love theme between a red
man and a white woman,
promises from the white
establisment reek hypocrisy

like some of 
Sage Sweetwater's
characters, Zane Grey's
characters are destroyed
because of their unableness
to change or redeemed
through a final confrontation
with their past.

Zane Grey leaves
Tammy Faye Bakker's
eyelash in the dust ...


A gentile sage-rider is about to be whipped by the Mormons to coerce the rich and beautiful Jane Withersteen to marry against her will. In desperation Jane whispers the prayer, "whence cometh my help!" Just then an unlikely hero, the infamous gunfighter, Lassiter routs the persecutors and is drawn into this conflict on the Utah-Arizona border.

The mysterious loner hires on to Jane's ranch. Through battles with gun slinging cattle-rustlers, cut-throats and the calculating Mormons, Lassiter unveils his tale of an endless search for a woman abducted long ago. Grey unfolds his story of seduction, secrecy, captivity and escape on the dust swept purple plains.

Judged by critics to be Zane Grey's best novel, Riders of the Purple Sage changed the western genre when it was first published in 1912. This novel shows the gritty as well the gallant in a more candid portrayal of the west than had come before. What will Sage Sweetwater's Jett Durango film trilogy contribute to portrayal of the old west?

Copyright 2006-2013, Sage Sweetwater, Celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist, brainchild of Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties, flagship of Stone Creek Woman



Silver chain link
around her neck,
twin bullets,
suckable dusk.  

Smoking guns in her
hands, Georgia Peach
fires outlaw
shots.

Bullets rip, pop
out street lights, glass
shards lying on the
mean streets, all of this,
the immortal of this
good woman, The Night
The Lights Went Out
In Georgia.

Backwoods lawyers,
crooked judges, dirty
priests, and extortionists,
music plays on the cherrywood
piano, the wild woman Vade, 
Georgia is coming for dances
at Tambourine Hall.

The Night The Lights
Went Out In Georgia,
she shot out the street
lights, coming to steal the wild
woman Vade in candlelight.

Georgia Peach knows
the wild woman Vade's
insatiable hunger,
however something
goes wrong.

A glass sphere the
size of a duck egg,
a peep-stone tells
Georgia Peach
the future, illusions
in lavender, riches
in feather quill
and ink well.

The Night The Lights
Went Out in Georgia,
she likes to do things
in the candlelight now,
her hands washed of
blood lust.

The peep-stone is
blessed with a vision
of what is left, a black
mare known as the
wild woman Vade,
Georgia Peach rides
all night with moon
for light, The Night
The Lights Went
Out in Georgia,
boarding a 75-foot
railroad car painted
black with a wreath
of gold lilies entwined,
in the candlelight
shadows, a bottle of
whiskey awaits her
inside and the ghost
of the wild woman
Vade.

Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist, brainchild of Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties, flagship of Stone Creek Woman