Customer Reviews

Knights of the Range

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I love reading aloud any Zane Grey western. He writes phonetically the dialogue of the day. Although Holly Ripple and Renn Frayne are the romantic leads, so to speak, it is Brazos Keene that steals the show. Knights of the Range is in my opinion a classic tale of chivalry. The sequel is 'Twin Sombreros.' I thoroughly enjoyed both. When Brazos sings 'Bury me on the lone prairie' it's enough to shed a tear from the hardest of hearts. This story definitely satisfies any sense of vengeance one might acquire throughout the story. I never like to say too much, it's like giving away the end of the movie, but this story is well worth the read even if you are not a fan of the western genre.

For decades the cowboy was the quintessential American hero. My generation saw the demise of that. I had not read a Zane Grey western in at least forty years, so reading THE KNIGHTS OF THE RANGE left me feeling nostalgic. It contained one of the favorite clichés of the era: "Frayne, I'll give you till sundown to leave this range" (p. 239). Though Grey's westerns are more romance than realism, his depiction of the cowboys was hardly whitewashed, being more akin to Clint Eastwood than Roy Rogers. Though capable of great nobility, they were hard-drinking, foul-mouthed (all blanked out, of course), callous, and brutal. They were also multiracial, including blacks, Indians, and Mexicans.
The hero of the story is the gunslinger, Renn Frayne, who would be an outlaw except "there ain't any law yet." He is reformed by his love for the heroine, Holly Ripple, a woman educated in the East who inherited a vast cattle ranch from here father. At her birthday party she delivers an inspiring speech lauding the vital role of the cowboy in spreading American civilization across the western frontier.
For what this book is, an old-fashioned western that captures the feel of the cowboy hero in his heyday, it is excellent.