Book Review: The Coyotes of Carthage

By Marcia Divack

In Steven Wrights debut novel, The Coyotes of Carthage, readers get a glimpse of the underbelly of American politics, including dark money, paid operatives, and of course, greed. Wright, a former Justice Department trial lawyer and now an associate law professor and author, provides a razor sharp and dryly humorous view of race, politics, and class in the American South.

The novels protagonist, Toussaint Andre Ross, a Washington D.C. political consultant, finds himself exiled to fictional Carthage County, South Carolina, nestled snugly in the Appalachian temperate rainforest, after a mistake embarrasses the firm he works for. Carthage County is undergoing a new gold rush, and a mining company wants ownership of the public land and access to the gold. Government officials in Carthage County are not interested in giving up land to the mining company, so Ross is sent in, with money and questionable morals, to see that the sale of the public land ends up on the ballot, and the county manager ends up under fire.

The Coyotes of Carthage reveals just what dark money can buy: fake social media accounts, phony companies, manipulated polls, slogan-filled political ads, and a staged liberation from the tyranny of local government. This is a dark look at politics as we know it and is likely to give us cause to question every political ad we see and slogan that we hear. It is also an exciting and intelligent political thriller that reveals the coyotes at our doors.