William Eastlake had two major topics: the American Southwest and war. In a capsule assessment of his career, his work would have to be arranged into two almost complementary halves. He wrote four novels that were set in New Mexico and filled with cowboys and Indians and three novels set during war—one in the Revolutionary War, another in World War II, and another in the Vietnam War. The complexity of these works was such that many reviewers regarded them primarily as avant-garde forays into modernist black humor. Indeed, it is his dark, abrasive humor, present in virtually all of his writing, that best defines him.

Eastlake made himself known with a style so radical that it may have repulsed more readers than it attracted. His defenders, though, are fierce in their allegiance and have had the literary stature to keep Eastlake's name and works in the public...