Sister Coyote: Montana Stories

by Mary Clearman Blew

Stories set in a small town in Montana focus upon the conflict of men and women with a harsh and unyielding landscape.

220 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Mary Clearman Blew is the author of the acclaimed essay collection All but the Waltz and the memoir Balsamroot. She is the editor of When Montana and I Were Young: A Memoir of a Frontier Childhood, available in a Bison Books edition. Her most recent novel, Jackalope Dreams, is also available in a Bison Books edition. She is a professor of English at the University of Idaho and has twice won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, once in fiction and once in nonfiction. She is also the winner of a Western Heritage Award and the Western Literature Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award.

Reviews

[Andy Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories set in Montana, with one exception that is set in an Idaho county very similar to the Montana locales, explores the tensions, challenges and joys of Montana life with nuance.
Particularly interesting was Laura, a recurring character in many of the stories, sometimes providing the story's narrative, sometimes a secondary character described with some detachment. In the first story, "Kids in the Dark," Laura is a teenager on her family ranch who is out with two boys, one a football star from town who is working on the ranch to get in shape and out of trouble. The three are out of night violating game laws by using lights to shoot deer out of season, Laura's narrative discusses the Montana issues involved, at the end of the story it is her who shows a bravado contrasted with the squeamishness of the two boys. That story is followed by "Hunter Safety." Laura is now divorced and working as a lawyer in her native town and takes her teenaged son to a hunter safety class. By now, Laura has mixed feelings about the gun culture but she agrees to her son's wish and gives him the opportunity to experience what she did when she was his age. Laura is a secondary character in the next story, "Bears and Lions" which is told my her sister who lives in the family home they grew up in. Laura is now a lawyer in Seattle. As her sister narrates their family life, the lack of money balanced by the family's joy in living on the relatively isolated ranch, certain tensions arise from the telephone conversations between sisters, especially when the sister's husband shoots a mountain lion. The final "Laura" story is at a high school reunion where the now sixty year old Laura has a drink with Jen. The story is from Jen's perspective as the conversation recounts how Jen got pregnant in high school and was ostracized by the school, her family, and friends. Laura is not especially sympathetic, she comes off as a voyeur and Jen's observations of the bartender's attitude toward the snobby Laura sums up the contrast between the two.
The title story "Sister Coyote," which is actually more of a novella, does not work as well. The charm of Blew's other stories was that a few lines of dialogue or observation told the reader so much about the characters, while in Sister Coyote takes pages to portray the same thing. Though as I write this I must concede that my reaction could be based on the despair and bleak nature of the story. It is very possible that the story was effective in its depiction of the downward spiraling of a young woman's life in a small Montana town and that is why it seemed so long
All in all, these stories and the others in this collection combine for a great read

[Vanessa Hall-Belluscio · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting book for me. Blew's characters and landscapes are always familiar to me and I enjoyed much of this collection. It was, however, one of the darkest reads I've had in a long time, especially the title story. I read it when I was pregnant, so that probably didn't help, but I don't remember ever being quite as disturbed a piece of fiction: that the protagonist contemplates/does? kill her young children was too much for me. The lightest story-funniest-is the last and contains a woman who locks a would be hunter into her outhouse overnight after he shoots her horse. It does seem to cumulatively carry on one of Blew's prominant themes-the West (and all the machismo the classic definition contains) being hell on women and horses but to a new, deeply disturbing level. I'm still chewing this one over.

[Luanne Cali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although all the stories are based in Montana - it doesn't really seem to matter - at least not for those I've read so far. Seems like good beginnings, plot, endings. I like her style.