Beneath The Coyote Hills explores the influence of choice and chance in our lives. Do we control our own destiny or is it dictated in part by mysterious forces beyond our control? Tommy Aristophanos is a luckless man, homeless freegan, fiction writer, and epileptic, who is haunted by grotesque “spell visions” and by his abusive father who returns, quite literally, from the dead. When Tommy's fictional creation, wealthy and successful V.C. Hoffstatter, emerges from the pages of Tommy's novel to harass him, plucky Tommy has to fight back. Hoffstatter believes that we author our own destiny, while Tommy's many reverses and ailment teach him that we control far less than we imagine. In the book's final narrative twist, we are left wondering who is the true Pygmalion"Tommy or Hoffstatter?
A great part of this novel's charm is this thoughtful, hilarious, imaginative, and enterprising community of like minded misfits and outcasts who befriend Tommy and who look out for each other. The total result for the reader is a compelling POV and a fascinating and inventive narrative.
Elan Barnehama, The Huffington Post
Beneath the Coyote Hills has cost me a sleepless night that I can scarcely afford, and has left me cold with awe at the unwavering skill and subtlety of the narrative. The sheer scope of the author's imagination, and the almost impossibly delicate poetic weight of the prose, has made the discovery of William Luvaas' writing one of the genuine joys of my reading-year. He is a remarkable writer, comfortably among the finest at work in America today, and this novel is a towering and maybe career-defining achievement, art of the highest order.
Billy O'Callaghan, Irish Book Award-winning author of The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind
With his third published novel, Beneath the Coyote Hills, master storyteller William Luvaas demonstrates once again his remarkable talent for creating over-the-top characters and tragic lives that feel entirely true and believable. And he does so in his signature lyrical style of writing, brilliantly enhanced here by grace notes of hyperbole and humor and anti-heroic irony, juxtaposed with imagery that's realistic, viscerally affective, and relentless.
Clare MacQueen, Publisher of KYSO Flash and editor at Serving House Journal