This is a book that a member of my reading group picked up at the library by mistake. It turned out to be one of the best "mistake books" around.

After Albert and Hallie Ryder lose their only son in WWII they set west and buy a plot of land in the far reaches of the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. He lives in a shack and she lives in the trailer and they watch the sunsets in the covered lean-to in between naming the creatures they observe sharing their patch of heaven.

For a while Albert had worked for the government killing coyotes but soon it became apparent that the almost 2 million killed was serving no purpose and actually doing more harm than good. He then became a kind of a rock hound while his wife kept bees and sold the honey to help make ends meet.

It soon came to light that the tailings from a copper mine had poisoned the water source they shared with the local animals. The couple purposely fouled the water to discourage use by the local coyotes and other animals.

It is at this point that the story changes to the POV of a coyote they’d named Brand X. He sets out to find another drinking spot and the reader follows him on his quest. Yes, the author has anthropomorphized the desert creatures. Yes, you will probably cry. Yes, it’s a wonderful book that I plan on recommending to anyone who asks me for a good book suggestion.

It is clear that lots of research went into the telling of this story. It is educational, gripping, exciting and moving. It is also timeless as the natural habitat of coyotes and other wild animals is slipping away. Readers get a peek into what animals may be thinking and the sadness that overcomes humans who care about the environment. .

What a treasure this book is! Closely echoing experiences mentioned by others above, I found this book in the library in the 1990s, loved it, gradually forgot about it...and then was haunted by it recently and decided I must buy a copy.

(But what was its title exactly...? That became a problem. Amazon y'all, would it be possible to tweak your search engine logic so that the incorrect spelling "Sky Water" with a space would get a HIT, and so on for other such cases? I started with this website, couldn't find it, went out to the website of a competitor and found it listed there, even though I had remembered it incorrectly as "Sky Water". And only then, when I had been reminded of the correct spelling, "Skywater", was I able to bring it up on this website. And I decided to buy it here because I have always been impressed by the amazon website interface -- generally -- this one search engine peccadillo aside.)

Popham's writing style is crisp, clean, and beautiful. Every word on the page is absolutely necessary - nothing is wasted. In one particularly exciting section, I found myself wanting to read faster - to skim through it - but I didn't dare! I would have missed too much. Even if you think you don't like coyotes, this book is well worth reading. It's not a "talking dog" story, but rather one in which the characters - both canine and human - come to life.

This is one great book. I would call it a realistic fantasy as the coyotes are probably doing more "human" like thinking than in real life. It was well worth my time reading it.

Skywater is a compassionate plea for ecological common sense. A beautifully constructed modern fable with a cast of unforgettable characters, both coyote and human, I was pulled in on page one and could not put it down. That was nearly 20 years ago, and I find it more meaningful every time I read it.

This books writing is ok, but it's horribly overdone with cliches of cruelity perpetuated on animals by one dimensional men. I didn't finish it. It made me ill. Corkscrewing wire hangers into blind pups in a den to yank them out, etc. Yeah I get the alleyway abortion metaphor. It's lame.

I just wanted to read this to see how bad this would be. The main coyote, Brand X, seemed to be a Gary Stu just from the back. Surviving a fanmily massacre? That's unlucky to the point of being unbelievable.

I found Albert and Hallie quite exasperating when the novel started because, they were so stupid! It didn't help that they didn't seem to notice. Hallie's nomenclature for the animals was quite uncreative. All she did was name them after brands. That made me wonder if the author wanted to see how many brand names she could fit into the story.

Speaking of Hallie, she threw rocks at the hunter, who shot Valvoline. Never mind that he at least apologized! He could've said ,"I shot your pet? That's too bad." In addition, she did that when he was driving away. She could've popped his tire or dented his car. On the plus side, she wrote a letter to the editor to criticize them and stand up for the coyotes.

I was a little more bothered by how Frank Kincaid was the stereotypical hunter than he killed Brand X's family. (Don't get me wrong. I still considered that much more gruesome than necessary. The man had no qualms about targeting pups.) It was due to the fact that hunters don't often get a positive depiction since, attacking an animal always makes look you bad-no exceptions. (A case in point is when a vet kicked a dog in order to save a family cat. She was fired despite having a legitimate reason).

Hank deserved a mention as a detestable human, despite appearing for a few pages. Not for the fact that he ran over Boyardee, it was the fact that he blamed the animal.That riled me up because, I've always gotten angry at how my father would sometimes talk about how animals cross the road then blame road kill accidents on them! I thought that he didn't care to learn about how animals think at first. I then realized that he just didn't want to blame the person. (Keep in mind that he's quite old enough to know better. Also, there are a lot of things people either try to avoid blame for or deflect blame on something else).

I couldn't fault the coyote exterminators too much since they were just doing their jobs and I something say ,"Someone's got to do the unpleasant jobs." (Of course, I wouldn't apply to that reason to every one of them). However, I was maddened at how they went to kill the whole group just because, they couldn't be assured that they wouldn't harm this child named Jenny. Never mind that there was a high chance of them leaving her alone.

Speaking of Jenny, I didn't understand how anybody was supposed to ignore how improbable her journey would've been. It was implied that she had no water for a trek that would've taken several hours.

Ray Draper was just the stereotypical trapper who wouldn't obey the law because, he didn't want his 'style' cramped. Never mind that some people just wanted to make trapping more inhumane, instead of banning it. Speaking of him, I thought his lie about having a purebred mutt in the back of his truck was stupid at first. That was until I remembered that some people do register mutts as purebreds.

Even though I called Brand X a Gary Stu right off the bat, I wanted to add more reasons for the labeling. He was three weeks-old yet knew what to do to survive. (If he was a few weeks older and made a few mistakes that carried consequences, I might've bought his survival because, I found out about a story about an orphaned pack of six week-old pups survived).

That said, there were a couple of incidents I couldn't label him a Gary Stu for because, animals would do this. The first incident was at the watering hole. He invaded someone else's territory yet ended up earning respect from everyone else. In addition, the original owner ended up getting scorned. The second incident was how Salem and Chieko competed for his attention, despite there being other males. Brnad X was the strongest, which a female would want.

Speaking of them, I didn't mind Brand X choosing Chieko because, she was distinguished from the other coyotes. First off, her name is Japanese. Also, she revered prey (even though that seemed kind of implausible). The most important thing was she was the one who reached Skywater.

I was left with a couple of questions. First off, why would Brand X's mother mutilate herself to grieve for her mate? The last time I checked, coyotes stuck to howling and whining. Also, why would the author be fine with writing (or typing) putting defecate yet use a substitute word for urinate?

The author's writing style was quite subpar. The author could've introduced the characters first then revealed their tragic past much later. Instead they introduced the characters then revealed that soon afterwards. That left me thinking ,"Am I supposed to feel sad?" (That's coming from somebody who feels bad for anybody, whether or not I like them).

Likewise, the tragedy didn't seem well-written. Most of the group died unnecessary deaths. (I hear about those all the time in real life. Why would I want to pick up a book to experience that)? Hallie's death was an exception, though. She was quite old and the back kind of implied that. I still found no real reason to develop an attachment to any of the characters. I also thought that she knew her story would get boring.(For the record, I'd say that about anyone who kills off a lot of characters. The one exception would be David Clement-Davies for his novel The Sight).

I praised the novel for being profane at first due to the types of words used and knowing people don't like seeing them in a young adult novel. That was until I saw loved used as a substitution word.

I felt that the author gave a poor explanation for why the coyotes couldn't drink the Skywater.It couldn't be drank because, it belonged to the spirits? What? Wasn't the fact that Dinky Moore became thirstier not good enough? (I recommend taking this bit with a grain of salt because, I'm not a spiritual person).

All that said, I was glad that the chapters were short and it took just a few days to be read. On another note, I wanted to point out that this was published in the 90s. (I have no clue why Amazon would set the publishing date at June 14, 2016).