Mary Austin (1868-1934)--eccentric, independent, and unstoppable--was 20 when her mother moved the family west. Austin's first look at her new home "changed her horizons and marked the beginning of her understanding, not only about who she was, but where she needed to be." She became the voice of the American West. In 1903, she published her first book, The Land of Little Rain, a wholly original look at the West's desert and its ethnically diverse...