[In The Burning Hills Louis L'Amour] made his one and only attempt at Literature—but Literature lost, and Louis L'Amour became famous. Twenty years ago, L'Amour was obviously under the influence of T. S. Eliot: The Burning Hills contains dozens of references to "The Hollow Men" and the final section of The Waste Land. Early in the narrative, the hero, Trace Jordan, scoops up "a handful of dust" from the "red rock" in the shadow of which he is hiding, and in the book's closing pages thunder and lightning contribute much lively dialogue to scenes otherwise half-dead from exhaustion….

The women who feature in the L'Amour oeuvre are firebrands more often than not, as the philosophical Mabry in Where the Long Grass Blows has found to his cost…. Or they are like Maria Christina in The Burning Hills—part firebrand, part spitfire, part saint, but All Woman….

There...