The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

Gemeinhart intentionally includes members of several disenfranchised groups as important characters in the novel: displaced Latinx women and children, a transient single Black man, and a runaway LGBT individual. Their ready reception onto the bus and into the lives of Coyote and Rodeo is meant to be an expression of the acceptability not only of these individuals. Rather, Gemeinhart’s desire is to reveal the humanity of each of these characters. They are not any different in the face of their brokenness or their empowerment from any other people. His message is that human beings regardless of their origins or peculiarities suffer the same losses and, just so, can benefit from the empowering presence of a family of other human beings.

Just as loss, disenfranchisement, and empowerment are potentially universal experiences, so Gemeinhart’s depiction of the mendicant Rodeo and Coyote are meant to be emblematic of the nation. He draws in vastly different American locations—from a Greensboro, North Carolina, barbeque house to a performing arts center in Billings, Montana—as a means of saying that the insights, truths, lessons, and emotions experienced by these characters are emblematic of the nation. Coyote reinforces this message with her frequent observations about human beings in general.