Coyote Weather - by Amanda Cockrell (Paperback)

About the Book

It's 1967 and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcing its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.

Book Synopsis

Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season in California, when everything is drought-stricken and ready to catch fire. It's 1967 and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcing its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war. Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he believes that, in the shadow of Vietnam, the Cold War and atomic bomb drills, there won't be one. Ellen's determined to have a plan, because nothing else can keep the world from tilting. And the Ghost just wants to go home to a place that won't let him in: the small California town where they all grew up.

Review Quotes

Coyote Weather is a spectacular re-creation of a lost but essential time in our history-California, the '60s, Viet Nam-nobody has ever captured it more accurately or written it with more understanding-from several different perspectives. A must read. Bravo! -- Lee Smith, author of Guests on Earth

This splendid novel describes the Vietnam generation's feelings about the war in Southeast Asia, the draft, relationships, the counterculture, psychedelia, women's issues, commitments, sexual tensions, and the looming uncertainty of where we were headed as individuals and a country. It's a trip, with all that and more combined in an artful, beautifully written journey. -- John Ketwig, author of ...and a hard rain fell: A G.I.'s True Story of the War in Vietnam.

A wonderful historical novel, filled with love, doubt, courage, defiance, war and peace, a desire to belong. The characters feel at once familiar and new, ordinary and complex, and so marvelously alive. A treasure of a book. - Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, author of The Orchard

The Vietnam War rages through Amanda Cockrell's masterful novel, Coyote Weather, a story about young love in an impossible, chaotic, fear-driven time. A poignant, compassionate, and suspenseful read, I couldn't put it down. -- Elizabeth Poliner, author of As Close to Us as Breathing

I thought I'd written the best book on the Sixties until a friend sent me this book. I could not put it down. I felt like I knew all the characters, and their stories were essential and previously, little snippets on the news. The protagonists Jerry and Ellen are as complicated as you and I, full of fumbles and missed chances but somehow, with effort, managing to survive and thrive with "what is." I can't recommend this book more highly. -Peter Coyote, actor and author of Sleeping Where I Fall