Well-known Shuswap author Ron Fox has just released his third book, which is no small feat for someone who didn’t start writing until, as he put it, he was “getting on in years.”
Coyote Gals and Hunting Pals, is part reminiscence and part memoir. It is the story of a group of adolescent friends growing up in the northern town of Telkwa, B.C., where being a kid offered endless adventures and some hard lessons.
In every chapter, the reader is swept along on adventure after misadventure, with Buster (Fox), Nick, Rocky and two sisters and a girlfriend from town who would ultimately become known as the Coyote Girls.
There are plenty of stories to make the reader smile, if not laugh out loud, as well as some more poignant ones about innocence lost and life’s lessons learned the hard way.
Find out how the Coyote Girls got their name. Join the gang – the one with no girls allowed – as they get even with a passing train engineer and tag along with Buster and Nick as they strike it rich with fool’s gold.
Learn about the importance of paying your debts and about the value of friendships.
Coyote Gals and Hunting Pals tells of life during a simpler time – an idyllic, and yet in some ways, a much harder time.
Fox says he lost contact with the people he knew growing up, his childhood friends and the sisters – the Coyote Girls.
“We drifted apart. I went away and was gone long enough to lose contact with everyone,” he said. “In time no one was left. There’s nothing really left of the old town now.”
He pauses and then says, “That was until I met two of the Coyote girls at a homecoming back in 2010. We started talking and reminiscing and laughing, and before I knew it I was writing a new book.”
Fox has written two other books, Ruff Trails and Tuff Tales and Boondocks and Bobbi-socks.
Fox writes in a straightforward style that readers will easily identify with. While there are certain harsh realities in his books, it is the poignancy, as well as the humour, that make the people in the book so real to the reader.
The Chase resident was in town last weekend signing copies, which are available at local bookstores.