Coyote Settles the South

John Lane takes readers into the heart of nature as well as into the nature of the heart, and he writers with wonder, wisdom, and profound attentiveness.

* author of Serena *

I first realized what a talent John Lane is when I read his book on the Chattooga. He is a dynamic writer I've come to respect.

* author of The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son *

Like the best American environmental writing, Lane strikes a balance between close scrutiny of the natural word and sudden flights of romantic reverie.

* Atlanta Journal-Constitution *

John Lane is an ecologist who uses a Caves of Lascaux mentality to get into the heads of his other-species neighbors. . . . In Coyote Settles the South, Lane walks us down the road to the future, checking out scat, tracks and fur, and is a kind of folk character himself, the wide-eyed and musing poet playing second fiddle to warriors in the field.

* Asheville Citizen-Times *

John Lane demonstrates in this engaging book why we need poets to ask good questions and drive the back roads in search of stories and creatures that are learning how to inhabit this landscape we’ve created. Following the southern coyote that has moved into suburbs, cities, and refuges alike, Lane illuminates the tradition of hilltop fox hunting, the strange intermixing of coyote and red wolf, the new profession of those working on human-animal conflict resolution and more. This is essential work for the twenty-first-century nature writer: interrogating our ‘continuing experiment in cross-species community’ while still managing to celebrate ‘the songfest of wildness on the edge of our suburbs.’ Thank you, John Lane, for this beautiful and nourishing read.

* author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit *

Coyote Settles the South is a wonderful book, a seamless mix of the personal and the scientific, chronicling the return of the wild, in the form of Canis latrans, to the American South. John Lane takes us exploring, and in his fine company we learn the facts about coyotes while also exploring the question of what the wild still means in our lives. His tone is not just smart but amiable, and his approach is balanced as he talks to everyone from trappers and hunters to scientists to those he calls ‘coyote huggers.’ He paints a picture of a resilient species that, rather than being reintroduced, is reintroducing itself, filling the old niche once filled by the wolf. To anyone interested in the wildness that can be found in their own backyards, this is an indispensable book.

* author of All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West *

The resilience of nature is one of the mysteries of our time, and nothing embodies this story more vividly than the return of the wolf in the form of the eastern coyote. John Lane tracks this elusive animal, leading one along the trail with astute observations and insights all the way.

* author of Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World *

Lane lopes from viewpoint to viewpoint like the canine whose cultural footprint he's tracking. . . . Love 'em or not, the coyote isn't leaving. Coyote Settles the South lets you in on why.

* The Post and Couri