Riders of the Purple Sage.. One of my favorites.
I always quite enjoyed the Grey novels, though they really got quite florid about defending the heroines' chastity, while at the same time throwing in innuendos about smoldering passion. Real women's novels, while going into raptures about the landscapes of the West.
About 8-10 years ago, a guy named Thomas Pauly wrote a biography of Grey that had figured out the cipher he used in his diaries. You can find it on Amazon.com. It turns out that Grey was a fanatic skirt-chaser, even while his wife was fully aware. He always seemed to have a teenage mistress with him on those trips, even when his wife was along.
It kinda took the gloss off his writing for me. Hell of a writer, and I still go back once in a while to reread some of his books because of the interesting subject matter, but I reinterpret much of them in the light of what I now know about him.
