Sister Coyote: Montana Stories [Hardcover]

Mary Clearman Blew (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2000

Set in small-town Montana of the Vietnam era and the present day, these short stories, linked by character and place, are populated by men and women in conflict - with their own desires, with each other, and with their alternately beautiful and harsh landscape. Hunting is a theme throughout - deer poaching by spotlight, coyote hunting by airplane, being hunted by a cougar, hunting for love. In the funny, poignant "Suzanne, Take Me Down," a man trapped in the "stale tail end" of his life seeks redemption in the form of a fallen-from-grace girl from a strict religious sect. In "Bears and Lions" a cougar is the living symbol of all the forces that threaten a family trying to hold onto their ranch in a changing West. "Varia's Revenge" features a sixty-year-old woman's unexpected triumph over the hunter who mistook her mare for a deer. And the title novella is a devastating tour de force that traces the intersecting paths of a female coyote, a coyote hunter, and a divorced mother who drifts, over increasing humiliations, into madness and attempted murder. Sister Coyote offers haunting, richly textured fiction from a writer who "is on many people's best western writing short list" (The Los Angeles Times Book Review). (61/4 X 91/4, 220 pages)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Women come of age on the modern frontier in this collection of seven linked works (six stories and a novella) set among the ranches, ranges, households, highways and snowstorms of Montana. Some take place in the 1960s, some in the '90s; several involve Laura, a Montana-bred attorney now living in Seattle. The strong, controlled tale "Kids in the Dark" depicts Laura in her early teens as she accompanies older boys on a nocturnal deer hunt and shakily proves herself braver than they are. "Hunter Safety" finds the adult Laura, now divorced, taking her teenaged son to a hunter's safety course and trying to come to terms with the brutal masculine world of her home state. Other stories have more complex structures and leave more (perhaps too much) work for the reader. The same could be said of the otherwise excellent, harsh novella from which the book takes its title, which links the gradual decline of a 30-ish woman to the life and fate of a young coyote. Divorced, depressed, harried and overweight, Beth Anne sinks into a numb despair, alienating everyone around her. Her plight is accentuated as she crosses paths with airborne pelt hunters, a hapless sheep rancher and a frightened teacher alone on a highway. Blew's well-received previous work includes story collections (Runaway; Lambing Out) and memoirs (All But the Waltz), also set in and around Montana's rough countryside. Aficionados of Rick Bass and Richard Ford will find Blew's mountain West settings familiar. Her focus on women, however, sets her apart. More attention to characters, less to stylistic experiment, would have made this a powerful collection. As it is, the narratives' many good scenes, compelling landscape descriptions and unflinching look at hard lives make Blew a writer to watch. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Blew's style is spare and plain in the western manner, often understated, the words bitten off sharply the way cowboys speak. -- Smithsonian Magazine

The spirit of the West. No stereotypes here, just the unvarnished truth, rendered in an appropriately clean, hard style. -- Dallas Morning News

These are all coherent, fairly lean, and effective little tales....well worth your time. -- All Things Considered, National Public Radio

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Lyons Press; 1st edition (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585740713
• ISBN-13: 978-1585740710
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,920,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stong and original, December 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sister Coyote: Montana Stories (Hardcover)

These stories have a way of saying a lot with little nuances. The characters and the descriptions are so real. The title story is disturbing but in my opinion, if an author can get you to feel an emotion, even if it's sadness, that's an achievement.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars very bleak........., January 16, 2001

By 

jeanne-scott (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sister Coyote: Montana Stories (Hardcover)

Whle the crafting of this collection of short stories of life in Montana is skillfully done, the stories are very bleak. Mary Clearman Blew writes with an austerity that defies description. She is a skilled artist, painting a clear but bleak picture of life in the boondocks of Montana. The parallels of the lives of various women with the life of a female coyote was interesting, but the short story Sister Coyote was a depressing, hopeless tale that literally removes any breath of hope. While the stories were artfully rendered, this book was just to depressing for me.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sorry, a disappointment, December 4, 2000

By 

Renee Evanoff (Yellowstone Nat. Park, WY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sister Coyote: Montana Stories (Hardcover)

I read this book after reading Mark Spragg's "Where Rivers Change Directions" which was magnificent. Mary Clearman Blew can write well, but I found the story "Sister Coyote" to be one of the most depressing stories I've ever read. There was nothing redeeming about it. It will serve to keep people from moving west if they believe that life is that grim, dark and hopeless. It was a torment to read. It was the only book I had on a plane flight and so kept going, but it was so sad it was painful. The other stories were much more interesting and I did enjoy them. Perhaps she should have used one of the others for the name of the book.