Coyote Girl: Stories

"Bull riders measure their whole lives in eight seconds. In that heartbeat between the gate swinging wide and the go's end, bones shatter, tendons snap, and fortunes and futures are made and lost. In Coyote Girl, Sabrina Hicks harnesses that same intensity in forty unsparing, mostly flash fictions. Here are drowned children and mangled cowboys rebuilt with titanium. Here is a woman who would rather sling guns than anything else her limited world can offer. Here are lonely diners and desert brushfires and little girls fleeing broken homes to be raised by the wild, both outside and within. Here, Hicks announces herself as a writer you shouldn't and won't and can't ignore."

-Jonathan Danielson, author of The Lowest Basin: Arizona Stories

"Sabrina Hicks' Coyote Girl captures the violent beauty of life in the Sonoran Desert: its landscape and its people. With prose that often reads like poetry, this is a love letter to the gorgeous and harsh conditions of the West. The characters in these stories were raised by the sun, chewed up by the heat, and consumed by the flash floods. Coyote Girl wants us to think about who we are in relation to where we're from, and it's a divine rumination."

-Stephanie Austin, author of BURN

"Sabrina Hicks' story collection, Coyote Girl, shines as bright as the high desert sun, displaying all the evocative and polished brilliance this writer possesses, most notably with her women characters, many with warrior spirits, even those in the throes of loneliness and violence, rising up in moments of redemption and liberation. These flash fictions and stories take place in the very unique and emblematic settings: a lonesome desert highway simmering under the noonday heat, the bramble landscape just off the asphalt and thorny arroyos just over the hill turn into life's struggles or salvation, a tree fort which holds, for our time, an essential act of humanity, and a stranded school bus where a connection becomes a lesson worth holding onto. Hicks is a natural-born storyteller, showcasing her deftness with words full of striking images, unforgettable characters, and grace. Coyote Girl is a magnificent debut by an author fully flourishing a powerful talent and craft."

-Dan Crawley, author of Blur

"This is the book that should be in every hotel room drawer across the American west. Sabrina Hicks is a master of short fiction, and even the shortest of these stories will stick with you long after you've read them. Pick any one of them and let it affect you. When brought together, this collection paints an incredibly deep portrait of a culture and a landscape. Hicks has a knack for writing fierce characters in the throes of hope, grief, and fear, and depicting a sense of yearning that comes to feel inherent to the haunting beauty of the southwest. For fans of Sam Shepard, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and palo verde trees."

-Burke De Boer, author of Songs of the Cyberspace Cattle Drive

"The desert is not only a place but a state-of-mind in Coyote Girl, Sabrina Hicks' remarkable collection of stories. Hicks' characters are seemingly as desolate as the desert they inhabit but there is beauty and strength in their stories that left me gasping in admiration. With hints of magic, stunning imagery, and unique and devastating insight into the human condition, this is one of the best story collections I have ever read. Highly recommended."

-Barbara Byar, author of In the Desert

Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.