APPRAISALS

Several generations of an eastern Colorado farming family consider their collective and individual legacies amid the 2008 financial crash.

Flora Brandt, turning 90 in 2008, raised her granddaughter, Maggie, with her husband, Oscar, after their prodigal daughter, Amelia, died in childbirth. Maggie got pregnant at 19 with daughter Ozzie (Oscar’s namesake), and married Fisher Markus, Ozzie’s father. Now Flora, Maggie, and Ozzie have experienced several major shifts, each of them nurturing different feelings for the agricultural life. Flora has moved, voluntarily, to a retirement facility. Maggie and Fish are trying to keep their Rubber Chicken Farm a haven for organic meats and produce. Ozzie, now 15, loathes the big-money interlopers who are buying up land and diverting precious natural resources from the nearby Owl Kill River to luxury properties. When Fish decides to take a well-paying job with an oil and gas company, the wedge between him and Maggie is obvious, but it becomes nearly insurmountable when he learns how far Maggie and Ozzie have taken their environmental activism. Author Boyles manages the neat trick of presenting many perspectives with sympathy, even that of a billionaire developer; since she was once a Colorado farmer herself, this can’t have been simple. However, her experience makes descriptions of farm life shine, from the sublime (a CSA display of fresh vegetables) to the ridiculous (a willful turkey nicknamed Ma Joad)—not to mention the plain heartbreak of a freak storm that destroys a season of work overnight. Readers should come away with a renewed sense of wonder for everyone who stewards the land, even for those with whom they disagree. Appraisals can be big or small, life-changing or ephemeral, but as these characters demonstrate, they almost always take time. “If all this feels like foreshadowing to you, Flora, that’s because it is,” Flora’s dear friend Emil tells her from his hospital bed. He might as well be speaking to Maggie or Fish or any one of us.

An achingly beautiful testament to human bonds with the environment and with each other.