Coyote Lost and Found (#2)

Gemeinhart, Dan. Coyote Lost and Found (#2)
March 5, 2024 by Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Coyote thought that staying in one place after her adventures in The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise would be okay, but being new to middle school in the 8th grade is hard. She does have one sort-of friend, and the school librarian is nice ("There's a limit to how bad a school can be if it's got a library. That's just a fact."). While hanging out in Yager, the van they lived in for sevearl years, Coyote finds a box containing her  mother's ashes. She asks her father, Rodeo, about it, and he tells her that he hasn't had the heart to scatter them yet. Both her and her mother had written down where they wanted their cremains scattered in a copy of Mary Oliver's Red Bird, but Coyote is horrified to realize that she sold the book when they were traveling. When COVID shuts down her school for three weeks, she talks Rodeo into hitting the road. She doesn't tell him that she lost the book, but plots a course to revisit the shops where she might have left it during a small window of time. Of course, they are all over the US, but since Rodeo is very philisophical, he buys into the idea that the mother wanted the process to be a journey. Salvador, whom they met on their last trip, is invited along, but so is Candace, a neighbor whom Coyote likes, up to the point where she suspects the woman might be more than a friend to her father. Along the way, the group picks up Wally, a retired office worker who wants to travel but doesn't want to drive. His cultural background is Thai, and there is a racial incident because he is Asian and people are upset about COVID that mirrors so many of the horrible incidents that occurred during that time. The restaurants are only doing take out because of the pandemic, but the thrift stores are open. The book doesn't surface, and Coyote becomes more and more desperate. In Pittsburgh, the store is closed, so after some bowling, Coyote and Salvadore sneak out to try to break into the store. Coyote manages to break her arm, but the police and the store owner are kind about it after Rodeo pays for the broken screen door. Eventually, Coyote has to tell her father the truth about the book and the lack of plans for an exact place to scatter the ashes, and they realize that the picture of the book they've been referencing is actually of the very book that Rodeo had, and they manage to drive to the thrift store and talk to the owner. He's just given the book to a friend, but Doreen still has the book. They even ask her to continue back to the west coast to scatter the ashes over the family's favorite pond. While the trip doesn't go smoothly, it is an adventure. 

Strengths: It was interesting to see the pandemic portrayed in a book that wasn't ABOUT the pandemic. Life did go on in a limited way, so having Coyote on her journey during that time made sense. Candance was a reasonable addition, and Coyote's attitude toward her was very realistic; she liked her, but also resented her; she wanted to be kind, but struggled with actually acting that way. Coyote and Salvadore have to look at their relationship again as both have gotten older, and Wally and Doreen are reasonable travel companions. I liked the inclusion of books, and was glad to see that Coyote was a big reader. I was also glad that Yager didn't have any mechanical problems; during the pandemic, it might have been difficult to get it fixed! 
Weaknesses: During the pandemic, our thrift stores and bowling alleys were all closed, so that seemed unusual. Also, having had to deal with three sets of cremains recently, I would imagine that the ashes would have been delivered in a plastic bag, and it would be somewhat odd for Rodeo to pour them out of the bag into a box. 
What I really think: This is a great choice for readers who want to know what happened to Coyote and her father, for fans of Mary Oliver, or readers who enjoyed Lawrence's Fire on Headless Mountain or Burnham's The Infinite Questions of Dottie Bing.

I get Coyote's ambivalence about her mother's cremains; I do. My own mother is still in a cardboard box (and a bag) in my closet, and I always put my newest pair of shoes near her, which would make her happy. I haven't scattered the ashes because she said at my aunt's funeral in 1984 that the columbarium was nice because my aunt would always be warm. This book is a good reminder that I just need to stop being sentimental, move on, and put the ashes on my tomato garden. (A location okayed by both my late father and my brother. Mom was a big gardener.)