Riders of the Purple Sage

"Grey hit the jackpot with 'Riders of the Purple Sage' (1912), the first of his chart-topping titles. As often happens with an innovative work, he had difficulty finding a publisher. The book was eventually taken by the New York firm Harper, after the commissioning editor consulted his wife on the matter....'Riders of the Purple Sage' has one of the best, and most imitated, openings in Western fiction....The action opens with a young 'rider' (a cowpuncher) about to be whipped....Enter a lone rider, dressed in black, packing two black Colt pistols by his side. His name is 'Lassiter'....With Lassiter an archetype was born: the lone-wolf cowboy and a gunman searching for something that he may never find....middle-aged, world-weary but alert, hard and lean as a whipcord, a man of few words, invincible in gunplay, and a dispenser of Solomonic justice.Grey, Zane is the author of 'Riders of the Purple Sage', published 2000 under ISBN 9780812590371 and ISBN 0812590376.