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

Unlike 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.

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