That Constant Coyote: California Stories

Winner of 1990 Josephine Miles National Literary Award

Gerald Haslam’s stories are of the quintessential California of working people who struggle to make a living. He is their spokesperson — no matter what their color or language — because he, too, has chopped cotton under the searing sun, has toiled on drilling rigs in fog thick as oatmeal, has lived in a house where Spanish and English mingled. His writing marks a boundary between the Golden State's stereotypes and the real people who persevere in seeking the California dream.

        That Constant Coyote contains twenty-five stories in all, nineteen selections previously published and six new pieces. The stories included in this anthology tell us what life is like in the regions of California and the West where drudgery characterizes each day, where menudo para desayuno or biscuits and gravy replace champagne brunch. Delve into these pages and you will quickly find a set of fascinating characters who inhabit "the other California" — a place Haslam knows well and so deftly describes.