Finally: a modern witch novel! Zaia Alexander tells a captivating yet reflective story about encounters with people whose words strike at the very core of one's existence, as if one had been waiting for them all their life. Denis Scheck. Coyotes roam hungrily through the neighborhoods, while the news warns of shootings and blind road rage. With the heat comes an eerie silence. Earthquake weather. Life in L.A. in this novel is not the Hollywood that the big studios portray in their films. Lou's everyday life is not made of the stuff of the dream factory either. Her life seems stuck in a loop until she reunites with an old friend at a film premiere, who has now become a successful director. He takes her to a class at a dance studio in Santa Monica and introduces her to the world of witches. This brings an electrifying intensity to her life. The all-too-familiar becomes extraordinary, and the everyday is cast in a new light. Lou realizes that there are exits and loopholes in the seemingly fixed coordinate system of life. A poetic, powerful, cosmopolitan novel that transcends boundaries, shakes up hierarchies between animals and humans, and between children and parents, and reveals L.A. as that shimmering secret in the desert that the city still is today. When I drove through the windy canyon the next morning, a coyote stood in the road before me. I felt a strong impulse to accelerate. Just before reaching him, I braked and brought the car to a stop. We stared at each other through the windshield. Motionless and for a long time, it seemed. Then he turned and ran into the parched bushes.