Running from Coyote

About the Book

According to Navajo myth if a coyote crosses your path you should turn back and not continue your journey or something terrible will happen. In Running From Coyote: A White Family among the Navajo the author spends a childhood dodging coyote. Set in Shiprock, New Mexico, the home of award-winning author Tony Hillerman's protagonist Jim Chee, the author loves life with the Navajo.

"Running From Coyote is a remarkable book, a brilliant example of how a writer can use memories of her own childhood to introduce the world to another culture. Not only does Ms. Buhler provide a clear view of the Navajo people, my own favorite Native American culture, she also tells a wonderful story of a white girl growing up between the Sacred Mountains. If I were still teaching my University of New Mexico classes, I would have it on my required reading list."
-Tony Hillerman

Excerpt from Epilogue:

When my family left the reservation in the summer of 1962, my adopted brothers and I seemed very much alike in one way: with their brown skin, they looked like they did not belong in the white world, even though their every thought told them that they were white: my white skin gave the appearance of "fitting in" when I reentered the white world, yet my internal voice told me that I belonged to the world of the Navajo.

About the Author

Born in Uvalde, Texas in 1951 the author now lives in San Diego, California. Running from Coyote: A White Family among the Navajo started as a personal journal for her two children but rapidly transformed into a story of childhood loss, racial bigotry, and a struggle between two cultures.