200 Western American Literature himself, a conservationist seeking an ethical but realistic relationship with nature that recognizes human needs but acknowledges rights for other creatures. The result is a book concerned with more than the coyote. It is about our need for a sense of stewardship of the earth, a sense that recognizes the complexity of ecological systems, lest we destroy ourselves in unthinking determination to destroy competitors. The coyote, he concludes, may be a much less endangered species than we are. Thus this book is many things. Presenting information both about the coyote and about various groups of people in their relationship with the coyote, it includes myth, legend, religion, biological facts, tall tales, and, in the process, an overview of writings about the coyote, from Twain through Dobie to contemporary biologists. No one can know the western landscape without knowing the coyote. For the greenhorn just making that acquaintance, this book can speed the process and deepen experience with understanding. For the westerner already a friend — or enemy — of the coyote, this book provides fresh insights into our relationship with the “defiant songdog of the West.” PAUL T. BRYANT, Colorado State University Frost in the Orchard. By Donald R. Marshall. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1977. 175 pages, $4.95.) The Blue Door & Other Stories. By Lawrence P. Spingam. (Van Nuys, California: Perivale Press, 1977. 60 pages, $4.00.) One of the fascinations of short fiction is the endless variation allowed by its ostensibly limited form. Happily for most readers, the short story, like the novel, is not as easily compartmentalized and “known” as classroom and critical definition might suggest. And besides its pleasing inscrutability, short fiction is handy — in magazines, journals, and collections. From quite different directions, Donald R. Marshall and Lawrence P. Spingarn bring added expansiveness, surprise, and accessibility to the genre in their respec tive, West-East collections, Frost in the Orchard and The Blue Door and Other Stories. It is tempting to label Marshall’s stories “western,” and “Mormon” and be done with it. They are that — in honest, authentic, and beautiful ways — and more. “Only connect . . .” is the message that pervades these dozen stories and numerous photographs (also by Marshall) : “The Wheel barrow,” “Christmas Snows, Christmas Winds,” “Bus Ride,” “Homecom Reviews 201 ing,” “The Reunion,” and “Souvenir,” to name a few. Connect the prose and the passion. Strive for proportion between mind and heart, person and person, youth and age, life and land — as individuals, family, and species. Although the voice heard is “religious,” it is not heavily, not explicitly didactic and cheerily upbeat. As one might expect from the title, Frost in the Orchard, there is sorrow here, pain, death, and tragedy too; but as a backdrop to the need for love between characters, and in our life relation ships. It is not too great an over-statement to say that Marshall’s stories affirm the human imagination, afford insight into the human spirit, bring us that sense of “Ah, humanity,” in ways that only first-rate literature can. Set in Utah, place has a prominent role in Marshall’s stories. But the landscape reflects mind and myth as much as it does geography. Sparse, austere, and literal on the one hand, the people, themes, and general ambience move simultaneously toward metaphor — the allegorical. Take “Homecoming,” a simple story of a father-husband’s trip home to Panguitch, Utah, “population 1,318” (also Marshall’s birthplace), for a family visit. It is an ordinary yet eerie compulsion for Glade, the protagonist, to pile in the car with wife and kids and head across Nebraska and Wyoming to Panguitch, and then through familiar boyhood streets to the town sawmill— and accidental death. It’s local color with a twist of horror, taking the reader along on the journey we all make; this time up the ramp with wood scrap into one of the mill’s burners. And “Souvenir,” a story about a father and daughter sifting through old toys and memories, saying good-by to the past and to their wife-mother, age thirty-seven and dying of cancer. Not maudlin, not excessive, each of Marshall’s stories has a special poignancy to...