In ‘Coyoteland,’ the Territorial East Bay Isn’t Just for Animals

One day, while taking a routine early morning walk around her home in the East Bay hills, author Vanessa Hua found herself face to face with a coyote. Precipitating the encounter was a noise she likens to a “scramble of high heels” that turned out to be the hooves of two deer chasing a coyote, which was suddenly running toward her at full speed.

The face-off took place during the 2020 lockdown. But it lingered with the author long after the coyote escaped into nearby brush, and helped shape her new novel, Coyoteland (out May 12 via Macmillan).

“To me, that encapsulated that moment where everything felt topsy-turvy and off-kilter,” she explains. “That stuck with me in terms of thinking about writing about territory, about predator and prey, but also the larger question of How do we be good neighbors to each other?”

In 2021, Hua began writing the book — which centers on interpersonal drama broiling within an exclusive East Bay community — amid the speculation of what a post-2020 world would look like. “There had been the racial reckoning about police brutality. That was the year the sky turned orange from wildfires. That was the year of COVID,” Hua recalls. “So by the spring of 2021, it was this kind of hinge point, like, where would we go next?” (Hua previously authored two national bestsellers, A River of Stars and Forbidden City, and worked as a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle.)

Coyoteland is set in El Nido, a fictional community in the hills east of Berkeley that epitomizes privileged liberal American enclaves. Its downtown has a deliberately dated, old-fashioned ice cream parlor; freshly licensed 16-year-olds drive Teslas and Range Rovers; and the majority-white residents cherish their outwardly progressive politics. With witty efficiency, Hua characterizes one of the mothers as someone who proudly listened to the audiobook of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility at 1.5 speed but struggles to quote it.

The events of the book take place under three stressful external conditions: the coronavirus pandemic, California’s increasingly unpredictable fire season and a rogue coyote that bites residents. Against this backdrop, an unexpected catalyst moves into the neighborhood. The Changs — patriarch Jin, his wife Kai, and their two daughters, Jane and Lily — relocate to El Nido from a one-bedroom apartment they shared in Fremont. El Nido represents a lifetime’s achievement, grander educational opportunities for the children, socializing with the one percent. But it also means becoming the lone Asian family in a predominantly white community.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kai, Jin has recently been laid off and is too proud to admit it. He’s using the move to El Nido to activate a financial scheme linked to a nearby real estate development project. It will soon put him at odds with his nextdoor neighbors, who have a financial stake in the project, and other neighbors less well-off who are hoping to benefit from its promise of designated affordable housing.

The coyote in El Nido, named Wily, attacks sparingly, but the mere threat of an attack feeds paranoia into the community like excess oxygen in a casino. Residents bond over Wily across racial and economic lines, even if it’s simply shared fear. Hua was partially inspired by a real-life story about a coyote on the loose in the Bay Area between 2020-2021; she also had a friend tell her about a woman wanted in Bernal Heights for feeding coyotes raw meat.

“There’s this tension, right? You hear that bone-chilling howl and you kind of pull the covers tight, but then they look very similar to our beloved pets and people want to try to reach out to them in that way,” Hua offers. She became invested in exploring that tension, and the attending tensions of different animals encroaching on each other’s territories.

The story alternates perspectives seamlessly from Jin, to his neighbors, to his neighbor’s nanny, and even Wily. “Coyoteland is a story about a community, and I felt like telling the perspectives from four families, and a parent and child from each generation, really got at what it means to live in this community,” Hua explains of the decision. “And,” she continues, “often people can get flattened or turned into a stereotype or a character or villain, and a project of my career is even when characters are making questionable choices, I hope to illustrate the larger forces at work that are shaping who they are and why they decide to do what they do.”

The events of the book center on real estate, which Hua notes is a topic practically “in the air and the water” in California. “Everyone acknowledges that there is a housing affordability crisis, but there seems to be no consensus on how to move forward,” she notes. The book’s detailed exploration of this subject owes a debt to her prior career as a journalist covering beats that included minority business affairs and acquainted her with “the macro forces” at play in major cities including affordable housing debates and more nuanced issues like racial bias in home appraisals.

California, Hua acknowledges, is full of natural beauty but also natural terror — earthquakes and wildfires and unneighborly neighbors. Coyoteland ponders that beauty, and what it will take to fight against the forces seeking to limit its accessibility. It is a story about a community, but also about community as shelter. Says Hua: “Our love for this place has to also include thinking about how we make a future for it.”