Synopsis
Sam Hunter, a yuppie salesman, who has everything he needs except the beautiful Calliope's love, confronts Coyote, the Indian trickster god, and his own forgotten and buried life as Samson Hunts Alone, a native American outlaw
Reviews
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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Lust proves the catalyst that reconnects a hotshot insurance salesman with his buried Indian past, and with a spirit guide he'd prefer to avoid: a fast-paced and funny, if somewhat fragmented, follow-up to Moore's Practical Demonkeeping (1992). Sam Hunter, formerly Samson Hunts Alone of the Crow reservation in Montana, left home in a hurry as a teenager after throwing a cop over a dam, established himself successfully in L.A. as an unflappably congenial insurance hustler, only to have his past catch up with him 20 years later when he stops to gawk at a gorgeous, leggy blond on his way to an appointment. A mysterious Indian appears in his life at the same time, and within 24 hours Sam has lost his job, his condo, and his equilibrium. The blond, Calliope, leaves him hopelessly in love after a first date, while the Indian, by changing into a coyote, a raven, a mosquito, and other shapes, is revealed as none other than the Trickster, Old Man Coyote of Indian legend. Having appeared to Sam as a boy on his first vision-quest, Coyote now wants to put the grown man's successful but empty life in order, but when Sam begs for a return to normalcy, Coyote complies--and Calliope vanishes. The two follow her to Las Vegas, where Coyote gambles away all of Sam's money and his car, but they team up with her in traveling to South Dakota to rescue her son, abducted by her crazed biker ex-husband. In a getaway with the boy, Calliope is killed--but when Coyote later makes the ultimate sacrifice in Crow Country, she magically revives for the sappiest of happy endings. Lively and loopy, and certainly imaginative, but the conventional underpinnings offer little support for frequent flights of fantasy, yielding an entertaining but hollow romantic adventure. (First printing of 50,000) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"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
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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. Eloise Kinney
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