Zane Grey wrote this splendidly thrilling sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage in 1915, but for almost ninety years it existed in a profoundly censored version. Young John Shefford, escaping from his troubled past in Illinois, heads west to follow up the curious legend of three people living imprisoned in Utah's isolated Surprise Valley, one of whom is a beautiful girl named Fay Larkin. Shefford, half in love with the girl he's never met, is determined to find the valley and free her--if she's still alive. Shefford is nearly ...
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Zane Grey wrote this splendidly thrilling sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage in 1915, but for almost ninety years it existed in a profoundly censored version. Young John Shefford, escaping from his troubled past in Illinois, heads west to follow up the curious legend of three people living imprisoned in Utah's isolated Surprise Valley, one of whom is a beautiful girl named Fay Larkin. Shefford, half in love with the girl he's never met, is determined to find the valley and free her--if she's still alive. Shefford is nearly overwhelmed with his experiences of the beauty of the high desert, his first meetings with Indians, his ideas regarding Mormon men and their secret wives, and his encounter with real love, all of which work their changes in him. He comes out a man made true and good, finally freed from the shame he has harbored for so long.
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The Desert Crucible is the follow-up story to Riders of the Purple Sage and answers the questions left hanging at the end of Riders. But it is also an independent story about a man lost in the ocean of his own life; a man trying to figure out where he belongs, what he can do, and if it is worth even trying to figure things out-not an unusual scenario in other Zane Grey works. For Zane Grey, himself, was a man still searching for the answers to life and to fulfillment. Something he would seek through adventures on the ocean or the wilds of the Great Southwest or anywhere where there was something new to be discovered.
Life is often a test, something we are faced with which we must either meet head-on, or let overwhelm us and beat us down. The test in The Desert Crucible is whether or not John Shefford, a defrocked minister from Illinois, can make the grade and rescue a girl two members of his congregation had told him about in his quest to find Surprise Valley. What makes this book worth buying and reading is: The truth at last has been told.
For the first time this novel is presented as Zane Grey wrote it before the editors at Harper & Bros. removed, for various reasons, certain passages and gives the reader a clearer picture of what actually took place, answering some puzzling questions readers had always wondered about for years. Fay Larkin becomes the sealed wife of a Mormon and has had a baby die, something denied or never mentioned in the other version. And although Fay struggles with guilt and remorse over what she sees as "sin" Shefford eventually is able to convince her that what happened to her is what many outside the Mormon circle consider to be rape and that, certainly, she had committed no unworthy offense.
Does a romantic novel get any better than that?
