“Claire McEachern beautifully renders a California you won’t find in Joan Didion’s essays, one battered by floods and fires, capturing what life will soon be like for the rest of us in a world of dramatic climate change. She sees things with unusual clarity, as well as with a mix of seriousness, self-deprecation, and humor. Those who love memoir will be drawn to Coyotes and Culture, as will anyone interested in what it means to live uneasily between culture and an often-merciless nature.”

—James Shapiro, professor of English, Columbia University

“McEachern captures the strange, dangerous beauty of Los Angeles and Malibu life, revealing a world that’s both more lush and more demanding than outsiders often see. Her book offers smart, thoughtful, and surprising encounters with broad-reaching cultural tensions that, she shows, can often best be understood at a human scale.”

—Sarah Mesle, associate professor of writing, University of Southern California, editor-at-large, Los Angeles Review of Books

• Attention to less-celebrated environmental and climate hardships of Malibu, CA and the West

• Writing style both humorous and erudite

• Attention to wide range of class concerns

• First-hand account of living in urban-wild interface, including wildfire and drought, coyotes and culture

• Story of an academic abroad in the backwoods of Malibu

• WIde range of reference, from Aesop to CNN, Jane Austen to reality TV