BOOKS: Skywater
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:
Skywater, by Melinda Worth Popham. Greywolf Press (2402 University
Ave., St. Paul, MN 55114), 1990. 206 pages, $17.95 hardcover.
Because Melinda Worth Popham’s Skywater is fiction, it won’t be shelved alongside
Grady’s work in libraries; but Popham does convincingly describe life from the perspective of
six vividly introduced coyotes, who flee from the loss of their water source due to pollution,
in quest of the water that sometimes falls from above and lies beyond the beyond. There are
memorable human characters as well, including a trapper who might seem overdrawn if we
hadn’t met his clone many times. Though never a big seller, the mythic appeal of Skywater is
such that it may endure to become an acknowledged classic––and to gain deserved recognition
when eventually it is discovered by Hollywood.
