Marilynne Robinson earned her reputation as one of the best contemporary writers with Housekeeping (1980), a first novel now considered an American classic. Remarkable not only for the lyricism of its prose but also for its self-sufficient, unconventional women characters, Housekeeping paints a vivid picture of mid- twentieth-century northern Idaho while simultaneously delineating the narrator's spiritual evolution as it is evoked by the natural world. Like most contemporary authors of the American West, Robinson has a knowledge of and concern for the natural world that have led her to speak out in defense of the environment. Her second book is not about the American West; instead, Mother Country (1989), a work of nonfiction, expresses her fear that Great Britain has poisoned the well of life by pumping radioactive wastes into the Irish Sea. A finalist for the National Book Award, Mother Country attracted almost as much notice as Housekeeping, although...