Although J. California Cooper's characters and settings are hardly the stuff of conventional Western literature, few contemporary authors more completely embody such seminal Western convictions as the supremacy of the individual, the power of personal moral authority, egalitarianism as the ultimate social ideal, and the inevitability of the discovery and punishment of evil. She is also, in the iconoclastic mold of many Westerners, a maverick who fiercely guards her privacy and individuality, who is proud of what outsiders may call eccentric behavior, and who is profoundly loyal to family and friends while resisting ties to organized groups of any sort. Partly in rebellion against conventions, she is reluctant to reveal her first name: as she asserted in an interview with Liane Hansen of National Public Radio (8 December 1996), "My mama gave me this name, and so I got mad when people just took it and used it"; instead, she...