Coyote Lost and Found: 07/03/24

Coyote Lost and Found by Dan Gemeinhart (2024) is the sequel to The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. Ella aka Coyote has been in school and is living in a house with her father after their years' long life on the road in a converted school bus. Now, though, it's time to head on the road again after Ella finds her mother's ashes hidden on the bus.

If this had just been a story of a road trip to scatter Mom's ashes, it would have been enough. If it had only been about finding the lost book with the location for scattering the ashes, it would have been enough. If it had only been about meeting a modern day 1%er who was burned out from work and is now recreated Sullivan's Travels, it would have been enough.

But it's also set in the earliest months of the COVID shut down. It's set at the time when most people were stuck in their homes, rightfully afraid of a rapidly spreading disease that had no cure and no vaccine. What this book hits on is the other side of the coin, those folks who had to risk traveling cross country during these early days where the disease was the first of the worries. There was also the worries of there being nowhere to eat along the way, no gas, or worse, angry violent people afraid of strangers coming into their town.

All of that is in the periphery of Coyote's desperate hunt for a specific copy of Red Bird by Mary Oliver that she had left somewhere at a thrift store on their last jaunt across the United States. They have to mask up. They are sometimes blocked from doing things because of the shut down.

Like the first book, this one sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. It's not too far removed either. The only change is the destination. In the original the destination was uhoria — an unknown future because of the tragic past where Ella's mother and her two sisters were killed in a car crash. Now the destination is rooted in a tangible place, the final resting place for the mother's ashes once the book is found.

Five stars

Comments (0)