Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

Coyote is 12 years old and lives in an old school bus converted into a house on two wheels that travels the length and breadth of the United States. A road trip, you might think. But no. The journey of Coyote, the cat Ivan and her father Rodeo is more an escape from the past and from memories. They can go anywhere except Poplin' Springs. That is, until one day the little girl learns that the playground where she grew up is about to be bulldozed. She wants to save it but convincing Rodeo to turn back is a desperate task. Thus begins an adventure that will take her from one coast of the USA to the other in just four days. Unexpected events, new acquaintances, secrets shouted into the wind and changes of course will lead the two protagonists to discover that often, in order to deal with the past, it is necessary to share the present. Endless American highways, sunshine, gas stations and a yellow school bus. What could be more “stars and stripes”? Winner of several literary awards, the most striking thing about reading “Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise” is how well-rounded the characters are. They are solid, credible and clearly defined. Not only the protagonist, who takes us to a sweltering Oregon gas station in the first person, but also all of the characters surrounding her story. Everyone is a necessary, integral and never marginal part of the story (so much so that one moves easily from a first-person narrative to a collective one of great universal and transgenerational themes). In a crescendo of intensity, the story of Coyote and Rodeo begins lightly and grows denser as the pages turn, in a style that is direct, ironic and often prophetic, but always intensely human. The reader is immersed in memories, in dreams of unusual journeys, in timeless friendships, and meets ghosts from a specific time: the past. It is the race to Poplin' Spring that unravels the plot mystery: freedom, lack of rules and a past must be replaced by the reclaiming of the names and identities that the two protagonists left behind five years earlier. To do this, they have to make peace with what made them let go.  

L'imprevedibile viaggio di Coyote Sunrise
by Dan Gemeinhart
EDT, 2022