Claire Boyles

Site Fidelity Claire Boyles

Firmly rooted in the modern American West, this story collection follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A seventy-four-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird-flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage grouse. In lean, lyrical prose, Claire Boyles evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes. Spanning the decades from the 1970s to a plausible near future, Site Fidelity introduces unforgettable characters who must confront the challenges of caregiving and loss alongside the very practical impacts of fracking, water-rights law, and other agricultural policies. It is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.