Claire Boyles

Appraisals: A Novel

Financial and ecological realities tear at the heart of a multigenerational farm family in this debut novel from a “deft and daring” (LA Times) Whiting Award Winner.

In her debut novel, Claire Boyles grounds the threat 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 fierce impulse to protect the places we love.

Praise for Appraisals:

In Appraisals, Claire Boyles gives us a new kind of American West pastoral, an eloquent celebration of land and place, and the people who tend to it. Sensitive to the nuances of class, Boyles’s keen eye asks us to reexamine our relationship to land and legacy to home and place. In her measured prose, Boyles is writing as much about wealth and class, about work and privilege, as about farming and the Western landscape. This novel has a rough-edged beauty that will knock you out.
–Nina McConigley, author of HOW TO COMMIT A POSTCOLONIAL MURDER

At once luminous, heartbreaking, and joyous, Appraisals is a gripping novel about a woman-led organic farm in oil and gas country. Drawn from true life stories of economic oppression in rural America, this is a book for anyone who loves fresh vegetables and fruits, wants to prevent environmental collapse, and cares about family farmers.
–Sarah Vogel, Author of THE FARMER’S LAWYER and former (and first woman) North Dakota Commissioner of Agriculture

Appraisals is as rich and thick with life as freshly turned soil. It is about home and what grows there, both with ease and with effort. It is full of grit and fear and faith and I loved it so much.
–Ramona Ausubel, author of THE LAST ANIMAL

In this gorgeous debut novel, Claire Boyles writes about the West and three generations of women who work small farms there. Appraisals is not only mesmerizing and honest, it feels necessary for the times we are living in.
–Ann Hood, Author of THE STOLEN CHILD

Appraisals is a beautiful book, wise in the knowledge of the riches of country, brimming with the deep sense of how the natural world works, and aware of the ways in which the family works as well. The land, the farm and the family are all part of this lovely novel, which traces the life of four generations in one magnificent place.
-Roxana Robinson, author of LEAVING

An achingly believable story about land, love, and heartbreaking choices, written by one of the best chroniclers of the contemporary American West.
— Michelle Nijhuis, author of BELOVED BEASTS: FIGHTING FOR LIFE IN AN AGE OF EXTINCTION

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Also in August 2026

Site Fidelity is getting a paperback!

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Set in the western sagebrush steppe, Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.

Praise for Site Fidelity

David L Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“That balance between hope–or acceptance–and forbearance factors into all 10 stories in the collection, which offer an unrelenting clarity. These are characters who don’t deceive themselves, even as they try to see the good, or at least the tolerable, in what they have.”

Erin Berger, Outside Magazine

“Site Fidelity…is interested in exploring how people form an ethos of climate justice and care for their communities and natural resources. Boyles often brings a sense of humor to this work, showing how that ethos can manifest itself alongside all the quirks and inconsistencies of the human brain.”

Michael Welch, Fiction Writers Review

“Site Fidelity is a delight to read at the sentence and individual story scale, but it truly becomes a marvel when viewed as a collection…a history of man-made abuse that highlights how we have arrived at our current climate crisis.”

Amy Hassinger, The Kenyon Review

“Site Fidelity bursts with pleasures–not just its lush attention to place but its frequent moments of humor…as well as the delightful frissons of surprise that shiver off the pages each time we catch a reference to a previous story.”