Care Of
Letters, Connections, and Cures
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Beloved storyteller Ivan Coyote returns with their most intimate and moving book yet.
Writer and performer Ivan Coyote has spent decades on the road, telling stories around the world. For years, Ivan has kept a file of the most special communications received from readers and audience members—letters, Facebook messages, emails, soggy handwritten notes tucked under the windshield wiper of their truck after a gig. Then came Spring, 2020, and, like artists everywhere, Coyote was grounded by the pandemic, all their planned events cancelled. The energy of a live audience, a performer’s lifeblood, was suddenly gone. But with this loss came an opportunity for a different kind of connection. Those letters that had long piled up could finally begin to be answered.
Care Of combines the most powerful of these letters with Ivan’s responses, creating a body of correspondence of startling intimacy, breathtaking beauty, and heartbreaking honesty and openness. Taken together, they become an affirming and joyous reflection on many of the themes central to Coyote’s celebrated work—compassion and empathy, family fragility, non-binary and Trans identity, and the unending beauty of simply being alive, a giant love letter to the idea of human connection, and the power of truly listening to each other.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Being unable to perform live during the pandemic gave author and speaker Ivan Coyote room to create something totally new and incredibly beautiful. In this moving book, the queer Canadian icon presents some of the most heartfelt and important letters they’ve received, as well as their own candid, gorgeously written responses. Every conversation here is a testament to how two people don’t have to be in the same room to build an unforgettable connection. Case in point: the author’s exchange with a loving father who candidly describes his journey to understand and fully support his transgender son. We were especially blown away by Coyote’s correspondence with singer-songwriter Ferron, in which Coyote draws on love, compassion, and candid personal experience as they challenge the musician to accept trans women. If you’ve witnessed the warmth and positivity of Coyote performing live, this book will evoke the same wonderful feeling. And if you haven’t, it’ll tide you over until they’re touring again.
