Coyote Blue, by Christopher Moore

I love the characters Christopher Moore creates. They're absurd and hilarious, heartbreaking and relatable. This is one of Moore's most popular books, a clash-of-cultures/true-love tale of Samuel Hunter, a fast-talking insurance salesman, who was born Samson Hunts Alone, a full-blooded Crow Indian with a dark secret in his past. His spirit animal, unfortunately for him, is Old Man Coyote, the trickster of the Indian pantheon. The beginning of the story finds Sam meeting Calliope, an incredibly beautiful young woman who is exactly how you'd imagine someone who's mother switched religions at a prodigious rate during her childhood. Sam falls head over heels, even as Old Man Coyote manages to destroy the last twenty years of Sam's carefully constructed life in the course of a single day. This book isn't as uproariously funny as some of Moore's others, but it's one of the best written. Like "Sacre Bleu," it's a bit more subtle, with characters you really come to care about instead of merely laugh at. I'm having a great time discovering all the different modes of Christopher Moore, and as always, look forward to reading more.