In a decade increasingly concerned with saving animals and their habitat, Melinda Worth Popham's Skywater may be a harbinger of literature to come. Whether calculated to do so or not, it touches all the right environmentalist themes: It lovingly portrays a particular place, Arizona's Yuma Desert; it vividly indicts cruelty to animals and the sad effects of pollution; it tells an animal story from the animal's point of view; and, without resorting to New Age clichés, it invests the coyote's world with spirituality.
Which may explain why it rolled from the presses to instant accolades from reviewers and booksellers. Right away it was selected to be one of twenty-nine literary works launching B. Dalton's Discover Great New Writers program, the only book chosen from a small press. Shortly thereafter it won the Edward Abbey Award for ecological fiction.
The following excerpt from Skywater follows the travails of three coyotes who, discouraged by the fouling of their water hole, strike out for new territory. Their leader, the mysterious “Brand X” is limping from a gunshot wound. He is accompanied by mate “Chieko” and the fearless “Dinty Moore.” Brand X feels the call of an inner voice which beckons him to “Skywater,” a place of endless, eternal water - the coyote equivalent of Beulah Land. When they reach the Pacific Ocean, however they come face to face with their own mortality, and with conditions of existence which are recognizably, and ineluctably, human.
Following the excerpt are responses to the book, exploring its meaning and ramifications. First, literary critic Audrey Foote summarizes the story and comments on Popham's spare, poetic
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