He expounded the Darwinian theory, often using it to critique developments in modern civilization as damaging to man, because man was an animal like any other. Finally, as in Rider’s of the Purple Sage, Grey found nature redemptive and rejuvenating. It cleanses his characters, and frees them to be what they should be.

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Conservative that he was, Grey was ahead of his time in many social areas—such as race relations—

sometimes creating strong Black or Hispanic characters (as in Knights of the Range in 1939) as well as powerful Native American characters. However, one of Grey’s genuine weaknesses is the logical corollary to his belief in nature. If a social practice seemed unnatural to him, Grey treated it with scorn and impatience. As in Riders of the Purple Sage, he is highly critical of Mormonism, seemingly because of the polygamy and the unnatural power of their leaders.

In his eyes, they had broken with the natural order of things.

Riders of the Purple Sage is an emotionally complex novel. It celebrates the frontier experience and mourns its passing. It rehearses the difficult balance between being an individual and being part of a community. It marks, in a very real way, the price of attain-ing character, and of losing opportunities to do so.

There are intricate social pressures experienced by the Mormons and the rustlers in Riders of the Purple Sage. While the main characters in Riders of the Purple Sage are formed by the frontier, not all of them are allowed to stay at the close of the book. However, they carry the fruits of the frontier with them in their character. Grey offers that promise to his readers. In Rider’s of the Purple Sage, Lassiter, the hard-bitten gun-man demonstrates this promise. Lassiter is powerful and masculine, yet he bends to Miss Jane, and comes viii

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to love little Fay. Grey used characters like Lassiter to show how powerful men could be, but also how they were able to be changed by women and develop deeper ties to communities without losing their essential masculinity. Though he is conservative in many ways, Grey’s larger than life men were addressing very real contemporary fears. Lassiter shows how you could leave the frontier and still carry its virtues, so men could set aside angry isolation and still remain men.

In many novels, whether they are mainstream popular fiction or literary works, money is an issue, class is an issue, but work itself—the backbreaking labor that many face day to day—is usually missing. It is skipped over on the way to more important issues.

That’s not true for Zane Grey. Law abiding citizens and hard-bitten outlaws can come together in admiration of a task well done, and almost anything can be forgiven to someone who works hard. Riders of the Purple Sage opens with Jane Withersteen looking over her land; within two pages she is defending her employee Venters from legal challenges based on how well he works. At a time when America had lost the frontier, and the country’s ethnic mix was shifting, Grey offered an ideal where all could meet as equals, judged only by their willingness to work.

Zane Grey has weaknesses as a writer, and there are potential dark sides to every positive aspect of his work. His love of the frontier could become suspicion ix

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of the city; his accent on physical labor could feed anti-intellectualism, and so on. But these are the shadows.