I live near the West but not in it. By one definition -- which maintains the West begins at the eastern border of the Dakotas -- it is eight miles away from here. (Self-identified "ranches" show up on the other side of the state line.) If so, I know Westerners well. By another definition the West commences on the other side of the Missouri River (about 240 miles by car). In my first year of college at South Dakota State University, I witnessed bullying and other obnoxious behavior by "cowboys," as the west-of-the-river crew called themselves and sometimes actually were. The late acclaimed author Wallace Stegner, who wrote a book chronicling his experiences growing up in the rural reaches of the Canadian Western province of Saskatchewan, witnessed enough cruel behavior committed by local cowboys to last him a lifetime.

There is more I could say, for example about Westerners' unwarranted boasting about their alleged independence and not, unrelated, their depressingly predictable reactionary politics. Of course that's not true of everybody who defines him- or herself as a Westerner, but it's common enough. I recall an experience a year or two ago at a local watering hole, when I chatted with a self-identified "cowgirl" -- she worked at a ranch in central Nebraska -- who happened to be passing through. Darkly comic circumstances sufficient for a short story led the two of us, at the conclusion of an episode that threatened to erupt into an old-fashioned saloon brawl, to adjacent stools along the bar. She asked me, with no irony in sight and no apparent cause, "Shall we talk about how much we hate Joe Biden?"

That speaks to provincialism, the sense that the little world we live in is like the large world we don't. It appeared that the woman was entirely accustomed to conversations about "how much we hate Joe Biden" and couldn't imagine anyone, even a complete stranger, who wouldn't pick up on his or her side. To me it only underscored an already profoundly skeptical assessment of the culture of the West. For all their proud, self-congratulatory independence, most think, complain, condemn and vote exactly like their neighbors. Unless you're one of them, it is not an admirable quality.

Still, as it should go without saying, Westerners are just people like all of us. What separates them and the rest of us is that they're louder about where they reside and about the special virtues they possess for doing so. My favorite Western musician, the late Ian Tyson, wrote about the Rocky Mountain West not as heaven on Earth but as a location with a particular geography and economy that affect how the natives negotiate their circumstances. They're not a uniquely noble lot, just our fellow North Americans trying to survive inside the space that life has chosen for them. If you judge them particularly wise, maybe you should get out more.

As the title lets us know, Blessed by the West is mostly (not entirely) mythology. You need only hear the first cut, "I Wanna Go Home," and just the opening verse, to get the message. To those of us born without sentimental genes, alas, the song amounts to no more than a compilation of cringy cliches about the wonderfulness of Western life, no qualification, no ambiguity, no dark or even off-white colors. (At the same time, I happily acknowledge, there's no end of equally syrupy songs about Midwestern small towns, a subject I know all too well. Don't come out here because of a song you heard. All but a handful are best disbelieved on the spot.)

On Blessed Sarah Pierce, against whom I have no grievance as either a human being or a musician (she's an appealing singer and a capable melody-maker), demonstrates her authentic Western-booster roots. I don't doubt her sincerity. I just doubt that the West she celebrates exists in this form within our shared reality.