Maxine Neely Davenport’s writing evokes the toughness and passion of Westerners born in the post-Steinbeck era, and portrays the struggles today's ranchers have with such problems as illegal migrant employees and cattle rustlers.

Davenport grew up riding horses in Oklahoma’s Hereford Heaven territory. In college, she won national awards as editor of the East Central Journal. At Colorado State University she received a master’s degree in literature, followed by a law degree from Oklahoma University. She began writing fiction following a career in law and has completed four novels and a number of prize-winning short stories.

While practicing law in Colorado Springs, she was active in Pikes Peak Writers and served as editor of The Pikes Peak Writer News Magazine. She traveled to China with other women lawyers and judges, the first People to People group allowed into that country. Later she accompanied a group of Heifer International personnel to Zimbabwe, Africa, where they visited farms and met with government officials. She spent one summer of law school at Queens College, Oxford, England, after touring Europe by automobile. Now living in Santa Fe, she keeps in touch with mountain-climbing friends who shared her hikes up twenty-six of Colorado’s fourteeners.