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Hacks meets Rebecca Makkai in this rollicking novel about a cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother venturing west in search of buried treasure—and a way back to each other—before they run out of patience, money, and options.
After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on Bea's dime.
Usually the responsible one, Bea isn't about to admit exactly why she's suddenly decided to visit, but she isn't the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has ... a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.?
Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother's wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea's entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she's onto something—and she's arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she's been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined.
Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world's most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we'll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves.
"Boland blends genuine thrills with an affecting story of a mother and daughter's restored relationship, and the narrative builds to a surprise ending. Readers will be delighted." —Publishers Weekly
"This depiction of a mother-daughter relationship is agonizingly apt...Rich, vivid characters...Gasps of gorgeous prose...Moments that gleam with brilliance."
—Kirkus Reviews
"In Boland's jaunty debut, an estranged mother and daughter head off for a weekend in the Utah desert in search of buried treasure—and possibly some forgiveness...Boland clearly has a deep knowledge of this otherworldly, often dangerous landscape, and she's come up with a fresh and unexpectedly sweet take on the theme of strained but salvageable mother-daughter bonds." —Booklist
"What might life look like if we relinquish the scripts of success we've been told to desire and let ourselves be guided by love, not obligation, to our beloveds, and by a willingness to chase down the unlikeliest dreams at risk of absolute failure? A search for buried treasure, both literal and metaphorical, both externally and inwardly, is what Scavengers embarks upon in this mother-daughter romp fueled simultaneously by adventure and escape. An exhilarating debut whose inhabitants are alternatively buffeted and emboldened by the winds of circumstance, billowing us forward towards its delightful, gratifying end." —Jemimah Wei, author of The Original Daughter
"What if the very best part of you decided to sabotage your life? What would you do next? Boland has written a necessary novel about the strange and miraculous psychic currents that undergird American life. David Lynch meets Willa Cather in this wondrously hopeful tale of madness, love, and redemption in the still-Wild West." —Lucy Ives, author of An Image of My Name Enters America: Essays
This information about Scavengers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kathleen Boland's fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. The former event director for Catapult/Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull Press, she earned her MFA from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award.
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