Coyote Dreams (Walker Papers Series #3) » (Reprint)

Though C.E. (Catie) Murphy lives in Alaska, she has never watched a single episode of Northern Exposure or helped a film crew simulate terrorist attacks on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. She has, though, been forced to convince people that she neither lives in an igloo, rides a polar bear, nor has a penguin for a pet. She's married to a chef, has two small cats, and a large dog who is afraid of everything.

According to one source, Catie began her writing career when she ran away from home at age five to write copy for the circus that'd come to town. You would think she'd remember this, but her own earliest memory regarding writing is from age six, when she submitted three poems to a school publication. The teacher producing the magazine selected (inevitably) the one she thought was by far the worst, but also told her — a six-year-old kid — to keep writing.

It's likely she would have, anyway, but she took the advice to heart. And a good thing, too: far more people after that (some of them famous authors!) told her to do anything other than write, if she possibly could.

It turns out she couldn't.

Her hobbies include swimming, walking, traveling, drawing and moose-wrestling.

Instead of powerful forces storming Seattle, a more insidious invasion is happening. Most of Joanne Walker's fellow cops are down with the blue flu—or rather the blue sleep. Yet there's no physical cause anyone can point to—and it keeps spreading.

It has to be magical, Joanne figures. But what's up with the crazy dreams that hit her every time she closes her eyes? Are they being sent by Coyote, her still-missing spirit guide? The messages just aren't clear.

Somehow Joanne has to wake up her sleeping friends while protecting those still awake, figure out her inner-spirit dream life and, yeah, come to terms with these other dreams she's having about her boss….

Publishers Weekly

Officer Joanne Walker of the Seattle PD, a 26-year-old shaman-in-progress, combats a mysterious sleeping sickness in Murphy's intriguing third romantic fantasy (after 2006's Thunderbird Fall). The "blue flu" has infected most of the Seattle police force, including Jo's boss (and future sweetie?), Capt. Michael Morrison. Jo pops in and out of fantastic flashbacks and lucid dreams as she learns more about her powers and her past with the help of her colorful spirit guide, Coyote, who suddenly goes missing. To vanquish the evil causing the plague, she must deal with troublesome newcomers Barbara and Mark Bragg, part Navajo twins, who've been working on a quantum physics project involving wormholes. Jo resorts to some major Cherokee-Celtic mojo to wake everyone up to the dangers of the Braggs' experiments, which allow dark butterfly demons and a Navajo god to enter present-day Seattle. Jo's romantic issues with Mark and Michael add fuel to the paranormal proceedings. (May)