From the publisher:
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.
https://bookshop.org/a/123058/9780393531800
Boyles’ debut novel, following her short story collection Site Fidelity, offers a thoughtful look at small family farms struggling to survive. Set in rural Colorado during the 2008 economic downturn, the story centers on Maggie Brandt, who runs a financially strained organic farm with the help of her family and neighbors. Her husband, Fisk, has been laid off but eventually takes a job with the oil and gas company planning a pipeline through the community’s farmland, a compromise that strains his marriage.
As a severe water shortage grips the area, a tech billionaire begins buying up nearby land and water rights, tightening control around the Brandt farm. Maggie is outraged, while Fisk remains pragmatic, focused on paying overdue bills and keeping the peace. Meanwhile, their teenage daughter, Ozzie, becomes an activist, joining forces with classmates and her grandmother to protest the pipeline and those controlling the region’s water, pushing the boundaries of the law.
The novel is deliberately unhurried, rich in imagery that reflects the rhythms of rural life, even as the Brandt family edges toward catastrophe.
VERDICT: A strong choice for readers of literary fiction interested in contemporary farming issues, and well-suited for book discussion groups.
©Library Journal, 2026
8/2026 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
APPRAISALS by Claire Boyles. W. W. Norton & Company. (August 4, 2026). ISBN: 978-0393531800. 288p.
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