Coyoteland
“Appealing to readers of all ages, Hua’s novel winds suspensefully from suburban complacency to its fiery consummation… coolly literary and illuminating,.”
"Who among us doesn’t enjoy a messy, layered family drama? Coyoteland promises to be as dynamic and explosive a suburban drama as Little Fires Everywhere."
—LitHub (Most Anticipated)
“Written with wit, empathy, and heart, Vanessa Hua gives us a rich suburban drama that forces us to untangle the details of our current world."
—Electric Literature, (67 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2026)
“Highly Anticipated”
—Publishers Weekly, Spring/Summer Buzz Books
”13 New Books by Local Authors to Break for This Spring,” 7x7 Magazine
"Swift, surprising, and wholly captivating, Coyoteland asks vital questions about race, class, and what it takes to truly belong. In training a discerning eye on one small, close-knit community, Vanessa Hua opens up an entire world. A tour de force from one of my all-time favorite writers, working at the very peak of her talents."
—Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit
“Vanessa Hua has crafted a riveting, multi-layered novel that brims with humor and insight. With remarkable specificity and striking timeliness, Coyoteland forces us to reckon with the most urgent questions of our moment while illuminating our shared longing for connection within families and communities. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls
”With a storyteller’s keen eye and deep empathy, Vanessa Hua turns fire season, real estate gambits, and a prowling coyote into an unforgettable reckoning with power, belonging, and the uneasy compromises behind every claim to home.”
—Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftover Woman
"No one writes like Vanessa Hua. With power, grace, and profound insight, Hua brings to life a community that—like the rest of today’s fraught world, and whether all of its inhabitants acknowledge it or not—is in a state of ongoing crisis. A tremendous, mesmerizing gift from this one-of-a-kind storyteller."—R. O. Kwon, nationally bestselling author of Exhibit
“Vanessa Hua’s writing is clear, forward, totally propulsive, and in Coyoteland she attunes her colossal talent to unveiling the deep frailties and intricacies of an affluent community in the Bay Area beset with coyote attacks.I was wise and wholly addicting to read, the largest pleasure. “
— Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds
"Coyoteland pulses with the urgency of this moment yet guides with an ageless understanding of the human heart. With characters so tenderly drawn they’ll feel like family and struggles so credible you’ll mistake them for your own, this is one you’ll want to devour but which deserves to be savored. Propulsive, engrossing, and wise, it is a perfect homage to the pandemic era."
—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of On the Rooftop, a Reese’s Book Club Pick
"Coyoteland is the novel to make us remember that we’re all foragers in the wild: humans wanting success and power and love and always wanting home; animals searching for food and survival. This convergence of many souls trying to make their way is a classic novel, in a California that Vanessa Hua limns with delicacy, precision, and the deep knowledge of an iconic place."
—Susan Straight, National Book Award finalist and author of Mecca
“When you have neighbors like these, coyote attacks are the least of your worries. Vanessa Hua takes an insightful look at suburbia where privilege, racism, and class consciousness are set to a low boil. Fans of LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE have now found their next great read. COYOTELAND will have fans howling.”—Pamela Klinger Horn, Valley Bookseller, Stillwater, MN
“What a feat! Reminiscent of Big Little Lies in its high-stakes, multi-family drama, with eerie overtones of predation, class, climate change, and surveillance capitalism, Hua expertly encapsulates the breadth of U.S. politics into the dynamics of one California neighborhood. Hua's satiric bite is inviting, her prose propulsive, and no living creature is left out of the story. Coyoteland ultimately reminds us of the interconnectedness of our world and the need for a home amidst crumbling infrastructure.”—Clarisse Jorah, Literati Books, Ann Arbor, MI
“COYOTELAND dives into life inside a polished suburban enclave where ambition and image mean everything. Behind the glossy façades, judgements poison and explosive secrets threaten to surface. Social pressures, cultural tensions, and environmental chaos collide in ways that feel both sharp and authentic. Vanessa Hua skillfully balances biting humor with emotional depth, keeping the pages turning until the very end.”—Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA
“Everyone wants to belong and build connections with classmates, neighbors, or colleagues. For some, it comes easily; for others, no amount of trying seems to work. In Vanessa Hua's book, the connections and disconnections in an upscale Bay Area neighborhood verge on chaos and, from certain perspectives, can be seen as racist and mean-spirited. Add to this discord the presence of a wily coyote who bites, steals, kills chickens, and terrorizes the community, and you have the makings of suburban drama at its best, written with grace and insight. Hua's message is one we are all grappling with in the post-pandemic world: how do we fit into a world that is spinning out of control? What if we can't?”—Gayle Shanks, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ
“Cliques, privilege, and striving for success permeate an upscale Bay Area community, while teens and their parents all grapple with issues. The first pages of Vanessa Hua's often-funny novel include a Chinese-American family, a black family, a proudly progressive neighbor and her Latin housekeeper -- none of whom can outwit the ferocious coyote roaming the area, or the California wildfires they can smell growing near. Hua's plot is propulsive and her characters always interesting, and mostly sympathetic!”—Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, NY
“Hua's magnetic storytelling draws an assortment of characters from a breadth of generations and socioeconomic strata into petty yet tantalizing suburban drama. The perfect intersection between a page-turner and serious conversation-starter.”—Thu Doan, East Bay Booksellers, Oakland, CA
“Loved this read about two teens, in high school, during covid, living in a privileged town. What Hua did so well was to capture the feelings of otherness, when one isn’t well off or white in a white wealthy town. And, how when you find your person, it makes a world of difference. So many interesting discussion points, especially about internet usage as a weapon and about the dynamics of the intersections race, class and privilege. But, I really loved the friendship between Jane and Tasha.”—Audrey Huang, Belmont Books, Belmon MA
Awarded a California Arts Council fellowship and the de Groot Foundation grant.
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