Coyotes and Culture: Essays from old Malibu

This unique collection of essays offers a gripping exploration of the precarious beauty and peril of California’s iconic coastline. Through essays blending personal narrative, cultural analysis,
and history, author Claire McEachern takes us behind the scenes of surf and celebrities to paint a vivid portrait of life on the edge —both literally and metaphorically. From the rugged Santa Monica Mountains to the shimmering Pacific, this work captures the paradoxes of Old Malibu: a place of luxury and risk, natural splendor and ecological vulnerability.

As an East Coast academic married to a fifth-generation Californian cowboy, McEachern brings a wry yet tender lens to the modern American story, delving into what happens to love and community in a land of both devastating wildfires and extravagant wildflowers. Her reflections weave together questions of beauty, resilience, and humanity’s uneasy relationship with nature, creating an unforgettable narrative of place and survival. Readers drawn to the drama of human stories set against larger cultural and environmental forces will find this book both thought-provoking and deeply moving.
 

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

“Claire McEachern beautifully renders a California you won’t find in Joan Didion’s essays, one battered by floods and fires, capturing what life will soon be like for the rest of us in a world of dramatic climate change. She sees things with unusual clarity, as well as with a mix of seriousness, self-deprecation, and humor. Those who love memoir will be drawn to Coyotes and Culture, as will anyone interested in what it means to live uneasily between culture and an often-merciless nature.”
—James Shapiro, professor of English, Columbia University 

“McEachern captures the strange, dangerous beauty of Los Angeles and Malibu life, revealing a world that’s both more lush and more demanding than outsiders often see. Her book offers smart, thoughtful, and surprising encounters with broad-reaching cultural tensions that, she shows, can often best be understood at a human scale.”
—Sarah Mesle, associate professor of writing, University of Southern California, editor-at-large, Los Angeles Review of Books