Perhaps no novel of the West is more famous or popular than Zane Grey's classic Riders of the Purple Sage. From the start, the novel was a sensation and the public immediately began clamoring for a sequel. Though a sequel did indeed follow just a few years later, it has never been available in the complete form that Grey himself intended. Instead, an abbreviated and dramatically censored version was released under the title The Rainbow Trail.

Finally, after nearly ninety years, the sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage has been restored from Grey's original manuscript, the missing and censored material has been reinserted, and the novel has been published under Grey's original title, The Desert Crucible. At last fans can read the story of Lassiter, Jane Withersteen, and young Fay Larkin, exactly as Zane Grey intended.