Appraisals

Financial and ecological realities tear at the heart of a multigenerational farm family in this debut novel from a “deft and daring” (Los Angeles Times) Whiting Award winner. Maggie Brandt is finishing her third season as a small-scale organic vegetable farmer in rural Colorado when the Great Recession of 2008 hits. After months of unemployment, her husband, Fish, takes a job with an oil and gas company, a decision that rocks Maggie and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Ozzie, both committed environmentalists. As the community organizes against a suspicious outsider who is buying farmland and water rights throughout the county, Ozzie’s activism escalates toward criminal mischief, and Maggie and her grandmother, Flora, must confront the complicated truths of the past in search of a path forward. Boyles grounds the threats posed by resource extraction and consolidation of land and water ownership in the wrenching, rich lives of her characters. At once tender and urgent, Appraisals is a moving portrayal of ecological and financial catastrophe, the powerful generational bonds between women, and the fierce impulse to protect the places we love.