“Enough here of both trope and ingenuity to give every reader something to complain about and something to love.”

This is my first by Zane Grey, and the first Western I’ve read in many years. At that level it was a refreshing read!

“Genre” books have a reputation for formula, and Grey’s classic hits many of them: a single woman whose ranch is in distress, the dark-reputed and silent gunman who appears, the villains who want to cattle-rustle and drive her away, the hired hands who are of varying degrees of loyalty, the orphaned child who serves for sentiment.

Beyond this, however, are a few surprises for me. The first is the political portrayal of the early Mormon settlers as villains, rich and manipulative and violent (and relatively inept) against the pure-hearted heroine. The second is the way Grey handles the resolutions to these villains: expect no end-of-novel final showdowns here. Instead, Grey offers more gritty (and probably realistic) closure to these storylines, moments quick and almost off-hand, as someone’s gun hand might be.

The novel is at its worst in its portrayal of the feminine, which did not overly surprise. The two main female characters–each set up to be strong, active, and independent–often collapse almost completely beneath the wills of the men around them. There are guesses and second-guesses of meaning around love stories–expected–though as ever most of these conflicts might have been resolved through a bit of dialogue which no one seems to engage. And the violence and villainy, outside of a few brief scenes, are kept at a good distance from the narrative, sometimes handled off-page, with our heroes reporting later what they did: an odd choice.

Still, Grey’s novel is at its best when portraying the vistas and valleys of the region, the pastoral utopias of “free ranges” for free peoples (never mind the absent indigenous populations here). Too, his handling of horse-riding and horse chases are both realistic and suspenseful, one mid-book chase probably the action-highlight of the novel.  Enough here of both trope and ingenuity to give every reader something to complain about and something to love.