Scavengers

By: Kathleen Boland

Published by Penguin Group, 2026-01-13

“Immensely moving and very funny.” —Megha Majumdar, author of National Book Award finalist A Guardian and a Thief “Wholly original and truly surprising, Scavengers is an ode to revisitation and reinvention, proving that changing your views of other people is the only way to change yourself. This is a desert rose of a debut.” —Courtney Maum, author of Touch and Costalegre A rollicking debut novel about a cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother venturing west in search of buried treasure—and a way back to each other—before they run out of patience, money, and options After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on Bea's dime. Usually the responsible one, Bea isn't about to admit exactly why she's suddenly decided to visit, but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.? Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother’s wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea’s entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she’s onto something—and she’s arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined. Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world’s most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we’ll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves.