Her father shot the grizzly bear whose hide is now draped over the sofa in her office. She, too, hunts and fishes. She runs marathons. They call her husband, the reigning champion in the annual Iron Dog Snow Machine race, First Dude.

She grew up in Wasilla, a town with fewer than 7,000 people near Anchorage, and was an aggressive point guard on her high school's state championship basketball team. In 1984 she was crowned Miss Wasilla and voted Miss Congeniality by other contestants, a title that would no longer fit once she entered elective politics. She was a runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant that year.

After earning a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho, she eloped with her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin, a commercial fisherman and North Slope oil field worker.

What about her political career?

As a young mother, Palin launched her political career in 1992, presenting herself as a "new face, new voice" on the Wasilla City Council. Four years later, at age 32, she was elected the town's mayor.

In 2004, she resigned from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after complaining to the office of Gov. Frank Murkowski and to state Attorney General Gregg Renkes about the ethical violations of a fellow Republican commissioner, Randy Ruedrich. He later agreed to pay a $12,000 fine for breaking state ethics laws.

She lost her initial bid for statewide office but then turned Alaska's political establishment on its head in 2006 when she easily beat Murkowski in a three-way race in the gubernatorial primary, then went on to win the general election. She won by being bluntly critical of her party's leadership.

What are some of her positions on social issues?

She is a conservative Protestant, and has been a member since 2006 of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group. She opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest, saying it should be allowed only to save the mother's life. She opted not to have an abortion after learning that the child she was carrying, her youngest, had Down syndrome.

According to an October 2006 profile in the Anchorage Daily News, Palin opposes stem cell research and physician-assisted suicide. She supported Alaska's decision to amend its state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Earlier this year, she told the newspaper that schools should not fear teaching creationism alongside evolution.

Where does she stand on energy and the environment?

She has said Alaska's economic future depends on aggressively extracting its vast natural resources, from oil to natural gas and minerals. She supports oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a position that puts her at odds with McCain.

She has questioned the science behind predictions of sea ice loss linked to global warming and opposed a state initiative that would have banned metal mines from discharging pollution into salmon streams.

Her intense pursuit of a pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to market in the Lower 48 led to what her administration has claimed as a major triumph: The state Legislature this summer approved her plan to give a $500 million subsidy to TransCanada to help build the massive project.

What about her reputation as a maverick, a reformer?

She pushed through higher taxes on oil companies, creating a $6 billion state windfall from the new taxes last fiscal year. She won legislative approval for a special $1,200 payment to every Alaskan to help pay for high energy prices.

Palin took on the state's long-term congressional delegation, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, calling on them to explain why they're the target of federal corruption investigations.

Marc Hellenthal, a pollster in Anchorage, said Alaskans like Palin because she has a reputation for "speaking her own mind and then worrying about whether it's popular afterward."

Compiled from the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, New York Times, Associated Press and the McClatchy Washington Bureau.