Coyote Blue FROM THE PUBLISHER
Part love story, part spiritual search, and a totally delightful reading experience, Coyote Blue is a novel of amazing freshness, reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Adams or Tom Robbins, with more than a hint of Carlos Castaneda. Sam Hunter is a very successful thirty-five-year-old insurance salesman. His life is more or less complete: he's got a new Mercedes, a great condo, a 52-inch television - but no girlfriend. Then he sees Calliope, the most gorgeous creature he has ever encountered. She's exactly the kind of woman he has always wanted in his life but never had the courage even to approach. Enter Coyote, an ancient Indian god famous for his abilities as a trickster, wise in many ways, in others a total fool. He has just the medicine to bring these lovers together, but after that he hasn't got a clue. In fact, Sam Hunter was actually born Samson Hunts Alone, a Crow Indian raised on the tribe's Montana reservation. At age fifteen, when he was full of rebellion, a miscalculation with the law forced him to run away. Twenty years later, safely ensconced in his yuppie persona, that earlier life is just a distant memory. Until Coyote enters the picture. From then on, nothing is the same. From Los Angeles to Las Vegas, then back to the Montana Crow reservation Coyote Blue is the story of how Sam Hunter becomes a brave man, of how he finds love and redemption and release. It is a wonderful, spiritual, and totally uplifting tale, by turns mysterious, terrifying, and outrageous. It is a cult novel for people too smart and too hip to be part of a cult.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Sam Hunter, the hero of Moore's raucous new novel, is the perfect insurance salesman: a complete chameleon who can be all things to all people, sizing up the ideal pitch to close any deal or make any woman. Living on the beach in Santa Barbara, Calif., Sam has all the accoutrements of the successful yuppie. His true identity--as Samson Hunts Alone, a full-blooded Crow Indian who fled his reservation and his heritage at age 15 after killing a policeman--is hidden and all but forgotten. Then one day, the Native American trickster figure Coyote enters Sam's life, with the apparent intention of destroying it piece by piece. Coyote's arrival coincides with Sam's involvement with Calliope Kincaid, an uneducated single mother whose hippie lifestyle is a throwback to the 1960s. When Calliope's biker ex-boyfriend kidnaps their baby, Coyote and Sam--against Sam's better judgment--set out in pursuit. The farther Sam travels from his life in the city, the closer he comes to finding himself. As in his previous novel, Practical De mon keep ing , Moore plays the supernatural and numinous for laughs, making even the most ludicrous events somehow believable with his breezy writing style. Only a consistent strain of misogyny mars this otherwise funny and entertaining romp. 50,000 first printing. (Mar.)
Library Journal
``There ain't no cure for Coyote Blue,'' writes Moore ( Practical Demonkeeping , LJ 1/92) to explain the mystifying and outrageous chain of events that alters Sam Hunter's life forever. As a teenager, Samson Hunts Alone runs away from the Crow Reservation to avoid standing trial for murder. Twenty years later he has changed his name, become a partner in a successful insurance agency, and all but forgotten his Indian upbringing. Coyote, an ancient Indian god known as a trickster by the Crow, is determined that it is time for Sam to fulfill his destiny as storyteller for his tribe. To that end, Coyote leads Sam on a merry chase--interfering in business, disturbing the neighbors, introducing love, and inciting a motorcycle gang to riot, all in a fantastic plot to lead Sam home. This novel is at once irreverent, spiritual, and wonderfully fresh in approach. An absolute must for adults and mature teens alike.-- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
BookList - Eloise Kinney
Old Man Coyote, an ancient Native American god known as the trickster, is back and better than ever--and up to no good, at least not if he can help it. He arrives in the form of a handsome, buckskinned Indian to wreak havoc in the life of Sam Hunter, a successful insurance agent with a carefully controlled life (and a carefully hidden past). One day Sam spots a beautiful woman getting into her car and admires her; suddenly Coyote is there to toss Sam into the middle of drug running, "kitchen pals" Buddhism, bikers, Las Vegas, true love, and death. Moore's writing is fresh and funny, and his spin on Coyote is delightful--the trickster, though well disguised, is still impishly capable of causing trouble (and teaching us how to look at life). Effectively mixing the mythic and the modern, Moore intersperses contemporary trickster tales with the comic saga of Sam's evolution from his early life in Montana as Crow Indian Samson Hunts Alone through his yuppie period to his life-changing encounter with Coyote.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
If Carlos Castenada had created his Don Juan with a greater sense of humor, the result would have been Coyote. A fascinating trip.
— Patti Davis
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