Coyote Dreams by CE Murphy

Coyote Dreams (The Walker Papers, Book 3) by CE Murphy picks up a short time after Thunderbird Falls (The Walker Papers, Book 2).  Joanne Walker finds herself in a rather precarious position--hungover, with no recollection of the previous night & a gorgeous, naked stranger in her bed.   She never gets drunk and she certainly never has casual sex, but all evidence points to the contrary.  However, nothing is truly as it seems for something powerful has been awakened & it's working it's way into Joanne's life. Her friends and co-workers are falling asleep and not waking up.  She starts receiving powerful dreams, apocalyptic dreams where the world ends & she is at the center of it all.  She is also having dreams where she has everything she ever wanted:  her old job back, the respect of her co-workers restored & the attention of a certain police captain.  But what is real and possible and what is just manipulation?  She'll have to figure it out if she is going to defeat the powerful force feeding on the life force of those that make up her life.

In this latest installment of the Walker Papers, we find Joanne still looking for Coyote to guide her, only to find out that he is trapped and can not help her without drawing attention to her.  Instead, she has to start looking inside herself for the answers.  CE Murphy has created a wonderfully complicated character in Joanne Walker. Her mixed heritage, her unconventional upbringing by her father & abandonment by her mother create a backdrop for a lost sense of self in a woman who needs to know who she is.  As a powerful Shaman, Joanne is capable of great things, but her inability to accept her power combined with her own issues of self-loathing are working against her.  In this latest story, Joanne has to look deep inside herself, to find the answers to defeat the powerful force that is slowly devouring those that make up Joanne's life.  We finally start to see her acknowledge and accept issues from her past that desperately need to be healed.  We also come into some interesting information about Coyote, which I hope is pursued in the next book, Walking Dead (The Walker Papers, Book 4).  Joanne's character is truly beginning to evolve and she just might be able to accept who she is and what she is meant to do.  However, nothing comes without a price and, in the end, she is faced with a very difficult decision about which path in life she is to take.

I really enjoy this series and Coyote Dreams (The Walker Papers, Book 3) is no exception.  I appreciate how Joanne's character evolves at her own pace & doesn't have a lot of major, life changing epiphanies that solve all her issues at once.  I'm seriously looking forward to reading Walking Dead (The Walker Papers, Book 4) to see how her decisions in this story have manifested in her life.