Publisher Description

One spring morning Alison Lomez watches her daughter, Rachel, wait for the school bus in front of their house when she sees a coyote trot up to the seven-year-old and sit down. This encounter between species is the first of many in Lisa Lenard-Cook's novel of life in Valle Bosque, New Mexico. The village is only a short commute from Albuquerque, but it is home to a healthy population of these adaptable canines as well as a contentious group of humans who disagree vigorously on how to deal with their wild neighbors. Lisa Lenard-Cook introduces us to coyote supporters, coyote haters, and an animal control agent who secretly practices a 'catch and release' program. Anyone who lives in the twenty-first-century West will recognise Lenard-Cook's sharp-eyed portrait of the edgy space between farms and suburbs, old timers and newcomers. But her witty send-up of the environmental issues that vex refugees from city life serves as a powerful and serious means of examining the ways human beings cope with life's mysteries and its inevitable dangers. The complex relations between men and women, parents and children, brothers and sisters that make up the daily lives of Lenard-Cook's characters will make readers reflect on their own lives and relationship to wildness.

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This story of the conflicts between humans and coyotes reminds us to reflect on our relationship with the natural world.

Author Biography

Lisa Lenard-Cook lives in Corrales, New Mexico. ""Dissonance"", her first novel, won the Jim Sagel/Red Crane Books Prize for the Novel in 2001.

Review

." . . an enjoyable and thought-provoking novel."
." . an engrossing, thought-provoking novel centered on characters on both sides of an animal control conflict."
""Coyote Morning" is a thoughtful, timely portrayal of people grappling with change--in themselves, how they see each other, and where they've chosen to call home."
""Coyote Morning" is written with a light yet sensitive touch. A thoroughly pleasant read."
"A wonderful book that everyone should read."
"Lisa Lenard-Cook reminds us of our constant connection to wild life here--our encroachment on it, our cohabitation with it, our ultimate mutual dependency to survive--in her novel "Coyote Morning." . . This is an important book from an award-winning New Mexican writer who writes with a sharp eye and a compassionate heart."
"A complex story of our time and region told with disarming simplicity."

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