Riders of the Purple Sage

Riders of the Purple Sage is a Western novel by Zane Grey, first published by Harper & Brothers in 1912. Scholars regard it as having played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre, and it has been called the most popular Western novel of all time.

The story follows three main characters, Bern Venters, Jane Withersteen and Jim Lassiter, who suffer persecution from the local Mormon community led by Bishop Dyer and Elder Tull in the fictional town of Cottonwoods, Utah, around 1870–1871. Jane, a Mormon by birth, draws Tull's hostility because she is attractive, wealthy and single, and because she befriends "Gentiles", or non-Mormons: a little girl named Fay Larkin, Venters, whom she has hired, and Lassiter. Tull, who already has two wives, wants Jane as a third wife and her estate as well. The plot involves cattle rustling, horse theft, kidnapping and gunfights.

The setting is the canyon country of southern Utah, against the backdrop of the influx of Mormon settlers between 1847 and 1857. Told by an omniscient narrator who reports the characters' actions and thoughts, the novel portrays the situation of women in Mormon culture of the period with unflinching directness. During the Second World War it was rejected for the paperback editions provided to US servicemen, because it was seen as biased against Mormonism. A sequel, The Rainbow Trail, followed in 1915, and the novel has been adapted several times for film as well as into an opera.