SCAVENGERS by Kathleen Boland

4 stars

Bea, a weather analyst for a financial firm in New York city, loses her job after making a risky  disaster prediction while her boss is out sick and gets both fired from her job, blacklisted in the industry, and under investigation by the Feds. Bea sublets her apartment and goes out to Utah to stay with her mom, Christy, to regroup while hoping to hear from a recruiter.

Christy meanwhile has never been a great Mom: in a constant churn of failed romantic relationships and having abandoned Bea to her grandmother’s care as a teen while off on a Canadian jaunt that started with her seeking divorce papers from Bea’s Dad and ended up with her staying for all of Bea’s middle and high school years. While Bea has been covering Christy’s rent which she no longer can without her job, her Mom supplements what she needs by prolific shoplifting. Christy’s a dreamer and romantic, and her current obsessions are a treasure hunt for a reported million dollars’ worth of antiques buried somewhere in the West by a dead poet and an online relationship with Bob who she met on a forum for treasure seekers. Christy has made a plan to meet up with Bob in the small rural Utah town of Mercy where she thinks the treasure may be located and she’s brining along a complex map she’s constructed filled with clues.

After years of separation, Bea and Christy barely know each other. Christy offers up maternal support, a new thing between them, as Bea wrestles with the disappointment that she failed to build a meaningful life in New York- not just in her work but also in failed friendships and finding a relationship with a man. Lacking anything else to do, Bea decides to accompany her Mom to Mercy.

Suddenly things get intense: Bob is not who he seems and has partnered with a young violent man who lives in Mercy, and Christy may be in danger. Bea connects with two local young men, Tag and Hank, who rescue her and Bea while lost hiking in the mountains after they arrive in town. Danger lurks everywhere.

Besides the thrill of the hunt, the true treasure of the book lies in the forging of intimate new bonds between daughter and mother, Bea’s metamorphosis into a life more suited to her happiness, and her Mom’s romantic needs shimmering with a happy ending.

Thanks to Viking Penguin and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.