Review: This western adventure story, published in 1912, has proved the most popular of Zane Grey’s novels and is generally regarded as a seminal work in the genre. More central than confrontation becomes the evolving relationships between the characters, amidst a living vibrant landscape as all their lives are transformed. As the romance between Lassiter and Jane develops, Jane increasingly abandons her church and Lassiter his guns. Meanwhile, Jane’s humanising effect on Lassiter is being compounded by her adoption of a little girl, Fay. Taking refuge in a hidden valley to care for Bess, a young rustler he’d accidentally shot, he begins to fall in love. A parallel plot emerges when Venters goes in search of Jane’s rustled cattle. This becomes complicated by Jane’s desire to wean him off ‘living by the feud’. Though Lassiter has long been on a quest to revenge the abduction of his sister, he elects to help fight Jane’s persecution. Venters is saved from a ‘warning-off’ whipping by Lassiter, a nomadic gunman and infamous killer of Mormons. Moreover, she has turned for support to Venters, a ‘gentile’ cowboy friend. She is resisting becoming a polygamous wife of a Mormon elder, which would effectively cede her estate to the church. Plot Summary: Jane Withersteen, a young and beautiful Mormon rancher, is in conflict with the corrupt patriarchal leadership of her Mormon community. First up, we head on out to the western canyons with the cowboys… This month we are reading adventure and sea stories.
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