WASILLA, Alaska - The mother kneels in the snow, cheerfully posing beside her bundled up daughter, behind the bloody, dead caribou the mom just shot.

Maybe not your typical family photo. But that's Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the disarming mom who's not afraid to carry arms or use them.

Palin would be a heartbeat away from the presidency if she and Republican nominee John McCain win in November. She was introduced to the country by McCain as very much the woman in that photo: tough and loving. She's the ethics-protecting, belt-tightening mom, who easily juggles family and her government job.

A visitor to her office can see Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five, as she coos to baby Trig and changes his diapers. A lush bear pelt shot by her father is draped over the couch and a three-foot king crab shell is perched on a table. Daughters Piper, Willow and Bristol stroll in and out, and crayon drawings are tucked beneath her glass desktop.

She switches back and forth between mother and governor without a blink. But details of her life that have emerged under the glare of national attention show that she's a complicated politician. She's disarming and accessible for some, vindictive and hard toward others. She has many loyal friends, tremendous hometown support, and a few fierce enemies.

This week, her lawyer is scrambling to sidetrack an ethics investigation into whether she abused her power as governor to pressure officials to fire her sister's ex-husband, a state trooper who had been disciplined for drinking beer in his patrol car, illegally shooting a moose and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson.

The McCain campaign boasts of her pork-cutting, but up close it looks more like a trim. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. She boasts of rejecting plans to build the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere," a $389 million bridge to an island with 50 residents. But only after she said yes did she say no, rejecting the locally-popular project after it was ridiculed and Congress cut some of the funds. She hung onto $27 million to build the approach road to the bridge.

She's an opponent of government financing of sex-education programs in Alaska. When she announced last week that her 17-year-old unwed daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant, she said having a baby would make her daughter "grow up faster than we had ever planned."

Palin was born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, and moved to Wasilla, Alaska, as an infant with her parents, Chuck Heath, a school teacher, and Sally Heath, a school secretary. Raised in a Pentecostal church, she has called herself "as pro-life as any candidate can be."

Like many Alaskans and other rural Americans, Palin was raised hunting and fishing. She played flute in the junior high band (and years later in a beauty pageant.) In high school. Palin played basketball and ran cross country while leading her high school chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.