Sunday, September 9, 2012

What is a summary of Riders of the Purple Sage?

Riders of the Purple Sage is a novel by author Zane Grey that tells the story of Jane Withersteen, who lives in Cottonwoods, a small Utah settlement. Jane owns much of Cottonwoods due to a small fortune left to her by her father.
Bishop Dyer and Elder Tull are fellow Mormons who try to get the best of her and set the plot of the story in motion. Tull wants to marry Jane against her will, so Jane gets help from characters such as Bern Venters and a man named Lassiter, who is notorious for killing Mormons.
Despite the fact that Jane has enlisted their help, she spends much of the novel keeping the characters of Venters and Lassiter from killing the antagonists, who, as previously mentioned, are trying to get the best of her. She struggles throughout the novel with her faith in the Mormon religion, and it is when she adopts a child that she truly begins to leave her old beliefs behind.
Venters takes a girl named Bess out into the wilderness and eventually falls in love with her. They escape to the East. Jane, her adopted child (Fay), and Lassiter make their own escape, running from the Mormons who are set on getting them, and find themselves in a new kind of paradise in a valley where they can finally be left alone.

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