I opened my eyes again. Ridiculous. The truth—as the last half hour had demonstrated beyond doubt—was that the war was lost. And yet here I was, so trapped in the habit of writing, that I was already trying to find the words to explain to someone who would never read them why no one would ever read them.

Dale Nelson reviewed this book in the Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, comparing it to That Hideous Strength. I bought it on the strength of that. Coyote Fork is a very different book from THS, but a fascinating parallel read.

Robert Lovelace is an English journalist who used to make his living as a travel writer. But that livelihood is gone, destroyed by social media. His last, desperate bid for writing work is an assignment to go to Silicon Valley and report on the roll-out of TOLSTOY, the latest brain-child of social media mogul Evan Bone (whom Robert blames for the loss of his job). TOLSTOY is supposed to represent a whole new level of Artificial Intelligence, one in which computers will be creating their own stories. Robert can only take so much of this, and rushes outside at last for fresh air.

In the parking lot, he sees Anne Grainger, his ex-girlfriend, who’s supposed to be in England. She’s another victim of Bone’s empire – after rediscovering her Christian faith in mid-life, she was cancelled for her thought crimes in a thoroughgoing way by Global Village, Evan Bone’s social media empire. She fled into hiding, her reputation ruined.

Back in his hotel room, Robert gets the news – Anne is dead. She killed herself, and she was nowhere near California at the time.

The vision, or visitation, of Anne leaves Robert with a single resolve. He’s going to discover the secretive Evan Bone’s true story, and tell it to the world. Give him a dose of his own medicine. Destroy the destroyer. His quest will take him to Coyote Fork, the abandoned site of a 1970s hippie commune, where it turns out Evan grew up. There’s a standard popular narrative about Coyote Fork, and then there’s the true story, which only a few people dare to tell.

Along the way, Robert will be joined in his quest by Ruth Halassian, a scholar who shares his passion – and might share his future. But the real secret of Coyote Fork lies with the local Indians, and they don’t tell their story to just anyone.

Coyote Fork is really not very similar to That Hideous Strength, except in certain themes related to the abuse of science and technology. Robert is a little like Mark Studdock in some ways. But this story is much simpler (which will relieve many readers). Where THS is explicitly Christian, Coyote Fork is more ambivalent – not anti-Christian is the best I can say on that. Where Christianity comes up, it fares pretty well, but the real truth in this story (to the extent that there is a truth) seems to be hidden among the pre-Christian Indians. The final resolution seemed ambivalent at first, but became clear once I’d thought about it.

All that said, Coyote Fork is expertly written, fascinating, and disturbing. I recommend it. Cautions for adult stuff and rough language.