Told by a master storyteller who, according to critic Russell Nye, “combined adventure, action, violence, crisis, conflict, sentimentalism, and sex in an extremely shrewd mixture,” Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic of the Western genre. It is the story of Lassiter, a gunslinging avenger in black, who shows up in a remote Utah town just in time to save the young and beautiful rancher Jane Withersteen from having to marry a Mormon elder against her will. Lassiter is on his own quest, one that ends when he discovers a secret grave on Jane’s grounds. “[Zane Grey’s] popularity was neither accidental nor undeserved,” wrote Nye. “Few popular novelists have possessed such a grasp of what the public wanted and few have developed Grey’s skill at supplying it.”

A decade after Jane Withersteen, Lassiter, and their adopted daughter, Fay Larkin, escape through Deception Pass, the family faces new trials when Fay is abducted for marriage by a local Mormon group. As Fay struggles against a forced marriage, she encounters John Shefford, a cowboy searching for a new life, and who may be the only one who can free her. The sequel to Zane Grey’s bestselling Riders of the Purple Sage, The Rainbow Trail was also published under the title The Desert Crucible.

Wealthy but morally conflicted, Jane Withersteen seeks peace and freedom from the constraints of her oppressive society on the Western frontier. With the help of her loyal rider Bern Venters and the mysterious Lassiter, Jane fights back against the authorities who aim to restrict her power and happiness. Filled with thrilling horse rides, evocative descriptions of the landscapes, and tense showdowns, the story will leave the reader eager to find out what awaits just over the hills in the valley beyond. The best-selling Riders of the Purple Sage and its sequel, The Rainbow Trail, established Zane Grey as the most popular Western writer of the early twentieth century. His works influenced countless authors and filmmakers for decades—and continue to do so today.